Talk:John Fleming (American politician)/Archive 1

Needs encyclopedic tone — reads like election campaign material

Dr. Fleming is currently a candidate for political office. This article reads like campaign literature, and in fact, most of its sourcing is from either

• His campaign website
• His medical practice website
• His book promotional tour

Details currently in this article are not notable with respect to the subject, other than to create an electable image — such as what he did during his military service. His particular assignment in the military is not unusual for a military physician.

I propose cleaning up the article — deleting the promotional material. If he is in fact elected to office, biographical details would likely become available from reliable sources, such as a Congressional biography. — ERcheck (talk) 16:41, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Reliable sources

• Primary election:
  • "Election Results 2008: Louisiana". New York Times. 2008. Retrieved November 22, 2008.

Shows that he won the Republican primary, held on November 4, for House District 4 Republican Primary with 55.6% of the vote. — ERcheck (talk) 16:55, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

BLP and political candidate

The subject of this article is covered by WP:BLP and is also currently a candidate for political office. As such, it is of the utmost important that:

1. All items in the article are accurately sourced from reliable sources.
2. Items are not copied into the article - see WP:COPYVIO.
3. This does not become a promotional article in support of his candidacy. Minutia that is not necessarily notable for the biography, but might "look good" for a candidate should not be added.
4. NPOV must be maintained. No "weasel words" — such as "staunchly conservative".

— ERcheck (talk) 22:37, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

More reliable source concerns

I have concerns about <ref name=mph>

"Minden's Fleming running for Congress". Minden Press-Herald. January 18, 2008. p. 1. Retrieved November 24, 2008.

meeting Wikipedia requirements for a reliable source. Reading the article, it contains much that is almost verbatim from Flemings election website. — ERcheck (talk) 23:20, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Notability of info

In the politics section, it was noted that Fleming was "a member of the transition team for Governor Bobby Jindal". This was from his election website, as well as a few other places. The inclusion of this information implies a major role in Jindal's team, such as a top advisor. However, according to Jindal's website ("Governor-Elect Bobby Jindal Announces Social Services Group Members". BobbyJindal.com. November 28, 2007. Retrieved November 27, 2008., his Heath Care Transition Advisory Council had two groups - a Social Services Group and a Health Care Group. Fleming was associated with the Social Services Group — which had a Chair, Vice Chair, and 30 members representing various Louisiana cities. Fleming represented Minden. As such, his role on the transition team was not a major role. — ERcheck (talk) 23:11, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Page infobox

The infobox says that he is the incumbent congressman. I am asking somebody to fix this because I am unsure how. It should say "apparent congressman-elect" instead of current member. Thank you. HUZZAH HANUKKAH (talk) 05:34, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Excessive links

This page has way to many internal wikipedia links. Is it really necessary to link to "physician" and "author." This encyclopedia should assume a knowledge of basic English. talk 9:05, 26 June 2009

Politics555 (talk) 03:41, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Source: 400k won't do (incl. video)

• Multi-Millionaire Rep. Says He Can’t Afford A Tax Hike Because He Only Has $400K A Year After Feeding Family.91.39.108.178 (talk) 21:38, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree that this is worth mentioning on the page, but the tone is not terribly NPOV. In particular, the worked-out employee salaries seem necessarily inexact(both because 500 employees is probably an estimate and because he said he spent $5.7 million on multiple expenses including salary), and he did not actually say his family spends $200K per year on food. 140.247.236.166 (talk) 03:19, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I have removed it because it simply appears to be recent news coverage that lacks any significant impact on the congressman. Simply being covered in some media outlets does not automatically make it okay for inclusion. Truthsort (talk) 06:17, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing. I believe it is appropriate for inclusion. It will be useful to have input from other editors as well. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 21:43, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I think it should be included in the article, at least as couple of sentences acknowledging the incident. The remarks have been very widely reported; a Google News search for "john fleming subway" indicates 35 articles reporting on the remarks, and 9 more articles reporting on Jon Stewart reporting on the remarks. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that for millions of people, this will be the first (and possibly only) time they've ever heard of this guy. While it may not have a huge impact on the actual direction of his career, I think it has a huge impact on his notability, as would virtually any incident involving a relatively obscure representative that drew this much national attention. (Just look at the hits on this article: it had 15 hits on September 17 and 3700 hits on September 19, the latest numbers available. Can it really be maintained that a 24,666% jump in interest isn't an impact worth mentioning? It didn't even hit The Daily Show until the 21st.) Theoldsparkle (talk) 16:58, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Again, the google searches or seeing how many hits the article gets as well as Jon Stewart coverage does not tell us that this has any enduring significance. It simply falls into news coverage. It would be inappropriate to assume that this is the most notable thing to happen to this congressman or to assume that this is the only time anyone has every heard about him. Truthsort (talk) 02:14, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

So in your view, do we just have to wait... what? A week? A month? A year? Following any kind of event, before we can determine that it's worthy of inclusion? That's not what WP:NOTNEWS says. The incident has been widely and reliably reported, and including it in the article in some capacity is not giving it undue emphasis. It's perfectly standard procedure to include recent events in articles about politicians, or about any other kind of topic. Theoldsparkle (talk) 02:41, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I guess five days is your standard for when we can decide that something reported in the media is worthy of inclusion here. Theoldsparkle (talk) 02:47, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

The Anthony Weiner scandal was much more notable than this and led to his resignation. It is not standard to include any recent coverage without taking into account if it is signifcant. Please read the essay WP:RECENT. Truthsort (talk) 05:43, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I am familiar with RECENT and with NOTNEWS and with UNDUE. Those essays/guidelines do not prohibit adding information about recent events to an article purely because they are recent, nor do they state that only recent events with truly dramatic and immediate impacts can be mentioned. Their guidance would be more relevant if we were discussing a politician whose life/career had been filled with many significant and widely-reported incidents or accomplishments, and the issue were whether to prominently feature a recent incident that, in the long-term, was unlikely to be considered significant in light of everything else the politician was notable for. But that's not the case here. Per the article, this appears to be the first and, so far, only incident involving this politician that has received widespread notice, and it's highly likely that until/unless he does something more notable, he will continue to be associated with this incident, and it's silly and, in a way, deceptive for this article to ignore the incident completely. I attempted to write about it as concisely as possible, but I did think it was most fair to include the actual remarks he made, which does lengthen the text. Theoldsparkle (talk) 15:11, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

They certainly do prevent mentioning recent events when they are hardly significant to the biography of a politician. In this case you're attempting to add an interview that received some media coverage for a couple of days but as since died down. You continue to go into baseless assumptions that this is the only thing notable about him and it would be nothing more than yet another baseless prediction that he will continue to be associated with this. It would be inappropriate to foreshadow that "he will continue to be associated with this incident". There is nothing remotely "deceptive" in not including this. Jon Stewart mentioning it does not make it notable as he mentions a lot of politicians on his show. What makes this so special that it needs to be mentioned? The edit you made is a serious violation of WP:UNDUE. At least the other editors who supported it said they wanted a brief mention, but you go ahead and add an entire section to it. This is precisely the issue with recentism as you give a disproportionate amount of info on an interview that has already died out in media coverage. Truthsort (talk) 18:29, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

If you'd like to discuss the placement or content of the text about the incident, by all means, please share your thoughts. As I said, while it's not my goal to make the content lengthier than necessary, it seemed most fair to me to include the entirety of the original comments. I shoehorned it in as a subsection of "Business career", but if you think it should be moved elsewhere, or that it doesn't need the subheading, I'm quite open to revising how the information is presented.

I think the natural place for this content would be as part of a section about his time in office, but I couldn't do that because the article doesn't have any content about his time in office, except a list of his assigned committees. My assumption that he has not participated in other notable activities comes from the article not mentioning any notable activities beyond his election. I'm not sure how I can make this clearer. The article doesn't indicate that he has received widespread notice (by which I mean, outside of his own region) for any previous events. He has received widespread notice (national news coverage) for this event. Therefore, this would seem to be the thing he is currently most widely noted for. Can you specify which of these three statements you believe to be a fallacy? (Also of note is that of the four sources I added to the article who reported on this incident, none appears to assume the reader has any familiarity with Fleming; he is introduced as "a Republican congressman", "a member of Michele Bachmann's Tea Party Caucus", "a Republican congressman from Louisiana", and, in the source from Louisiana, "Rep. John Fleming of Louisiana.") If you believe that Fleming has other activities or accomplishments whose notability would overshadow the significance of this story, perhaps you could a) describe them here and b) consider adding them to the article.

You also seem to be confused about how I perceive the relevance of the Daily Show. The Daily Show segment is not why I believe the incident to be notable; the incident is notable because it received significant coverage in reliable sources. But I think it makes sense to mention the Daily Show because the Daily Show segment itself has also received significant coverage in reliable sources. If Wikipedia has a precedent or guideline that Daily Show coverage of an incident is inherently not worth mentioning here, by all means, please point me to it. Theoldsparkle (talk) 19:05, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

You continue to make the tireless argument that because there is news coverage then it makes it okay for inclusion. This argument is frequently made and the fact is that just because there are reliable sources covering something does not make it the only requirement for adding in the article. The media coverage on this lasted for about a day or two and it appears whatever criticism came out of this came out of the partisan blogosphere. Your comment that "none appears to assume the reader has any familiarity with Fleming" is you once again making a baseless assumption. Because you are the one adding this in the article, the burden of evidence to prove this is the only thing he is known for is on you, not me, and I can safely tell you that your belief that unfamiliarity is somehow being established by how the writers introduce Fleming in their articles is comical. Precisely what introduction would lead you believe that familiarity is being noted? And as far as Jon Stewart, again receiving some coverage does not make it okay for inclusion. The Stewart sketch amounts to nothing more than trivial nonsense. Truthsort (talk) 19:33, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

I was going to provide several examples of articles that assume the reader is familiar with the subject, but that's really a waste of time, because it was a trivial point of mine and wouldn't convince you anyway. (Okay, one example: See here how Barney Frank's name appears in the headline without qualification, and is described as "the Massachusetts Democrat," not "a Congressman from Louisiana." Now tell me I'm making a baseless assumption about the way the article is written, and we'll move on.) Somewhat more relevant would be if you could provide examples of other media coverage of Fleming that show this incident is insignificant by comparison, but you ignored that request.

In light of the other viewpoint expressed here and the many other users who have attempted to add this information to the article, I don't agree that the information should be excluded on the basis that a single editor, who believes that widespread significant coverage in reliable sources is insufficient criteria for inclusion, hasn't been convinced to include it. I don't think including the information falls afoul of the guidelines in any way, and I don't think your own criteria for inclusion is supported by the guidelines.

If you think Fleming's notability for other activities outweighs his notability for this incident, then I suggest you add information about his other activities to the article. Certainly, if there's important information about the representative that's been omitted from the article, adding that information seems like it would do far more to bolster his legacy and improve Wikipedia than seeking to suppress what little information is already there. Theoldsparkle (talk) 20:29, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

And yet you continue making the same arguments. You have failed to prove that this notable to his bio and not just news coverage. The coverage is not as widespread as you make out to be and the fact is this was in the news for about a day. It that results to significant coverage then that is quite sad. And as far as your belief that content should not be excluded because one editor objects, well this is not a vote. Your ill-conceived arguments do not result to a consensus. I must also say that your argument on familiarity is ridiculous. So I guess that because articles refer to Fleming as a congressman signals unfamiliarity? Truthsort (talk) 18:59, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

(I'm dropping the "unfamiliarity" issue because it's not essentially relevant and I'm not interested in teaching a journalism course.) While my arguments may not equal a consensus in themselves, I see little indication that yours hold any more sway; telling me (over and over and over) that my reasoning is bad and that I'm being repetitive does not mean that you've proven that my reasoning is bad, or that the assertions I keep repeating are wrong. What I think does indicate a consensus is that, besides my own contributions here, two other editors have said here that they think the issue is worth including, and several other editors have indicated through their edits (before and after the semi-protection) that they think the issue is worth including. I don't see what reading of the situation would indicate a consensus to the opposite effect. Theoldsparkle (talk) 23:33, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Even the two editors that supported it would probably not approve of the undue weight you gave it. They simply wanted a brief mention. Much of that editing was just pure vandalism so going by that means nothing. Truthsort (talk) 16:30, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

As I said before, if you want to suggest actual changes to how the content is presented, please suggest how you think it should be improved. As I wrote it, it included a) the comments, b) the fact that people criticized the comments, and c) the Daily Show's mention of the comments, based on the amount of coverage the Daily Show segment specifically received. The majority of the text consists of Fleming's own words (especially now that his quote has been lengthened by another user); I have no idea if you think it would be an improvement to remove his words, because so far you've declined to offer any specific actionable suggestion to improve the text. Theoldsparkle (talk) 21:08, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

My suggestion is to completely remove this because it does not prove that this interview are anything remotely significant outside of just an interview where some in the blogosphere had an issue with it based on how they took the interview. This has already faded away after basically one day of coverage and it is ridiculous undue weight to mention of any of this. This is precisely why we do not automatically include content when there is some coverage, something you obviously refuse to understand. Truthsort (talk) 19:12, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

My rationale has never been that this is a hugely significant event that the press will continue to report on for months to come, but that it is significant relative to Fleming's career as, by all appearances, the only incident involving Fleming to have received such widespread notice and media coverage. I know you contend that that this is a "baseless assumption" and that it's equally possible that Fleming is a well-known figure in national politics whose many hugely significant accomplishments, none of which happen to be currently mentioned in this article, could nevertheless be reeled off by any American citizen. I continue to feel that if an issue does exist of putting undue weight on this one incident, the best approach for mitigation, and for improving this encyclopedia, would be to bolster the rest of the article so as to put this incident into its proper context. I continue to encourage you to do so or to suggest other changes beyond removing the incident entirely. Theoldsparkle (talk) 20:32, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Your belief that this significant to Fleming's career is the problem. How exactly does an interview that was basically picked up by blogs based on what they implied he meant. How precisely this makes this the only thing he is known for remains beyond me. We don't go by news spikes to determine what is significant. Truthsort (talk) 05:39, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

(outdenting for readability) Let's say I know a plumber named John Doe. John Doe has never been the subject of media coverage, and so only a small group of people -- those who have met John Doe in person -- know who John Doe is. One day John Doe saves a baby from drowning. Because of the incident, John Doe receives significant media coverage. A million people, who did not previously know who John Doe was, see the media coverage and learn that John Doe is someone who saved a baby from drowning. Media coverage of John Doe and the rescued baby ends soon afterward. Even though people are no longer seeing or hearing much about John Doe saving a baby, and John Doe has lived much more of his life being a plumber than saving a baby, it is still the case that John Doe is much more widely known as someone who saved a baby, than as a plumber. In the same way, John Fleming is (by all appearances) much more widely known as someone who made some controversial comments, than he is for any other accomplishment, because he received widespread media coverage for making those controversial comments, and lots of people who did not previously know who John Fleming was now know him as someone who made some controversial comments. And that is "how precisely this makes this the only thing he is known for," to use your words. Theoldsparkle (talk) 18:59, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

The problem with that comparison is that he is already notable compared to this anonymous plumber. I would also say that once again you assume that this what people only know about him. You have completely refused to understand that. Truthsort (talk) 17:00, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

I hope that the BLPN posting noted below will lead to more interesting and productive results than this discussion has. Theoldsparkle (talk) 18:08, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, it is impossible to have any sort of productive discussion when you fail to realize that news coverage does not automatically make it okay for inclusion. Truthsort (talk) 08:04, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

There is an inappropriate emphasis on the idea or "implication" that the Congressman intended to say that he spends $200,000 on food. His comment obviously meant the aggregate of supporting his family. Yet, much of the notations surround this. Jon Stewart's treatment of this is not serious. How is this a notable or long term concept? Also, there is a statement that Stewart criticized O'Reilly, but it does not mention that O'Reilly had just as much criticism for Stewart but in a serious way. I don't see the importance of or notability of distortions by the bloggers who have an obvious POV. Theoldsparkle seems to continue to want to thrust this POV and uses bloggers and a political satire program to support his apparent POV. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Politics555 (talk • contribs) 21:07, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

With respect to Theoldsparkle's argument about the most noteworthy event for Fleming, this is incorrect. Fleming is best known for his leadership against the Patient Protection and Affordability Act. He introduced H. Res. 615 which called out supporters of this bill for wanting for Americans what they (members of Congress) would not subject themselves to in terms of being covered by this act. The issue went "viral" and was in the news and discussed on the internet for months and remains highly cited on the internet today. Ultimately, Congress relented and added an amendment to the bill to cover Congress under the act as well. And it was an added discussion on Snopes. Yet, there was never an article added to Fleming's bio on this subject. I don't think Theoldsparkle is necessarily acting in bad faith. I think that he/she has a strong bias on this subject and is unable to be objective. The Jon Stewart content is intended for satire, not instruction. The "$200,000 spent on food" comment is inaccurately characterized and intentionally distorted for political effect. Again, I don't think this article is worthy as a part of an encyclopedia for the reasons stated already and the fact that it was essentially a one or two day news cycle. The interview was on 19 Sept. and "The Daily Show" ran on 21 Sept. O'Reilly defended Fleming and attacked Stewart the following evening. That was the extent of significant news events. Jon Stewart never made an attempt but to satirize Fleming's statement for humor. How does this become a historical event?Politics555 (talk) 03:41, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

How does this statement merit any citation on Fleming's bio? "Fleming's comments were widely reported and criticized, including by bloggers who portrayed him as out of touch with the difficulties of lower-income Americans." Is it noteworthy how bloggers portrayed Fleming? They could have portrayed Fleming to be a bunny rabbit, but that would not make him one. Fleming's comments were in the context of the impact of higher taxes on jobs produced by his companies, not a complaint that he would not have money to feed himself as portrayed by bloggers. Again, there is no reason for this rubbish to be posted as fact.Politics555 (talk) 04:04, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

I heartily encourage User:Politics555, User:Truthsort and any other interested editor to add more information about Fleming's activities, particularly within his political career, to the article. Theoldsparkle (talk) 15:09, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Fleming's interview statements

A discussion has been opened at WP:BLPN on the remarks made by Fleming and their aftermath in the subsection 2011 tax plan comments. I've backed out some recent changes made by two SPA accounts. However, I believe some more pruning is needed. I think we should report on what reliable sources say about the blog commentary, but not cite to the blogs themselves. In that way, we let reliable sources make the determination as to what is noteworthy, as opposed to us picking the various blogs on either side of the political spectrum and what they say. We should also keep this to a minimum so as not to give it undue prominence. It's a recent phenomenon, and it's unknown at this point what long-term value it has to the article.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:51, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the protocol is for articles that get discussed at BLPN, but I've left a response there summarizing my view. I have no objection myself to keeping the content at a minimum, although after others expanded it with significant detail on support for the remarks, it seemed quite unbalanced to limit the detail provided on criticism of the remarks. Theoldsparkle (talk) 15:47, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

The comment is typical political speech, nothing more. I would like to trim it to something like this: Fleming's comments prompted considerable political commentary, both positive and negative. Politico gathered some of the negative commentary, such as Daily Kos, which criticized the salaries that Fleming pays his employees and the amount of his personal budget. Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, agreed with Fleming that raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations would hurt the economy. Josh Beavers, publisher of the Minden Press-Herald in Fleming's hometown, defended Fleming's comments in an editorial, writing: "His sentiment was only that the more taxes he pays the fewer people he can employ. High taxes on business owners thwart economic activity."— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jarhed (talk • contribs)

I have the following comments (and I apologize for being overly wordy, but since this is obviously a contentious issue, I think extra attention to the potential subtleties of phrasing is warranted):

• I'm assuming this is intended to follow the section's current first paragraph (which I just revised slightly to fix a formatting error), where Fleming's comments are quoted.
• I think the first sentence should simply be: "Fleming's comments prompted considerable commentary." Not all the commentary was what I'd call precisely "political", and I think "both positive and negative" gives the impression that there were equal amounts of positive and negative commentary, which may or may not have been the case, but I think the most objective thing to do is simply to illustrate the most notable commentary and let the reader form his own impression. I can't see what "both positive and negative" adds to the sentence when the paragraph will go on to show that there was both positive and negative commentary.
• I have some issue with the second sentence, about Politico. I think it misrepresents the Politico source, which was reporting on the story, which was that bloggers were responding to Fleming's comments, and naturally quoted several bloggers in the process. It also turns Politico from a secondary source to a primary source, as if Politico's reporting on it made the story notable, and not simply showed that it was a notable story. Also, I see no reason to only use the Politico source and not the Times-Picayune source. For both those sources, having just reread them, I don't think the points you've highlighted--about employee salaries and "personal budget"--best summarize the general tone of the criticism. I think the best sentence for this purpose would be: "The remarks were criticized by bloggers who attacked him as being out of touch with the difficulties of lower-income Americans." (And if others want to add "liberal" before "bloggers", I'm okay with that. I think that was actually in the original text I added to the article.)
• No problem with the Bill O'Reilly sentence, except the extraneous comma after his name.
• In this shortened version of the content, the quote from Beavers seems unwarranted. I think that sentence should end after "editorial."
• I still think the Daily Show segment deserves a mention, given that it was widely reported and that Bill O'Reilly's comments were not really directly in response to Fleming, but to the Daily Show segment. (I hope that's not a contentious point; the Fox News headline is "Bill O'Reilly Hits Back at Jon Stewart.") For the same reason, I think it should be mentioned that the Daily Show segment also mentioned O'Reilly.
• For the above reasons, my suggested version of this paragraph would be as follows:

Fleming's comments prompted considerable commentary. The remarks were criticized by bloggers who attacked him as being out of touch with the difficulties of lower-income Americans. Responding to a segment on The Daily Show in which Jon Stewart criticized both Fleming and Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, O'Reilly agreed with Fleming that raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations would hurt the economy. Josh Beavers, publisher of the Minden Press-Herald in Fleming's hometown, defended Fleming's comments in an editorial. Theoldsparkle (talk) 15:06, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Jarhed has an excellent suggestion. Theoldsparkle continues to push his POV by emphasizing sources he/she likes and removing or de-emphasizing those he doesn't. Politics555 (talk) 15:41, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

In accordance with Wikipedia guidelines, as I've asked you several times before, please discuss content, not contributors. Theoldsparkle (talk) 16:19, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

I think we are almost in agreement about the rewrite. You can't aggregate the comments of all of the bloggers the way you have. None of them are notable and properly should not be mentioned in a BLP at all. As a compromise, a good one I think, let's mention the Politico article that does the aggregation for you and reference it. If the reader wants to know what the bloggers said, he or she can follow it. You might notice that I pulled two of the non-notable bloggers, the two from Daily Kos, and presented their arguments. I disagree with any mention at all of Stewart. He is a notable political commentator, but he is not a politician accountable to voters, and his show is on the Comedy Network. He should only be used as a source in unusual cases (such as his show on the National Mall). I left in O'Reilley and the editorial writer in the politician's own home town to balance the negative commentary from Politico and Daily Kos. So, pretty close?Jarhed (talk) 18:54, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

By the way, your discussion above about how to "properly" summarize the criticism, I see that you are trying to do that, but you should know that at WP what you are trying to do is called Wikipedia:Synthesis. How you or I might characterize this criticism is not pertinent to the discussion, it is what the sources say. I meant it earlier when I said that this entire episode strikes me as typical political speech and none of it is very noteworthy. The mention of the episode in the article gives it too much weight (see Wikipedia:Weight). It needs to be pared down substantially.Jarhed (talk) 19:18, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

I didn't use the Times-Picayune ref because I wanted to use the Politico blog aggregation instead. I suppose you could pare the article down to just the Times-Picayune source opposed to the Minden Press-Herald source. However, that would not give the real flavor of the discussion, which was an interview to start, a big blog response, and a countering response from O'Reilly etc.Jarhed (talk) 19:29, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your willingness to discuss this reasonably. I hope we can continue to do so (and that you don't mind my use of bullets, as it helps to organize my thoughts). Attempting to start from the simplest issue and work our way up:

Fleming's interview statements 2

• Since you didn't comment on my suggested change to the first sentence, does that mean we agree on that change?

I'm flexible on that.

• I agree wholeheartedly with including both the Bill O'Reilly response and the Beavers editorial, but I still don't see a reason to include the specific, relatively lengthy quote from the editorial. We're not including quotes from any of the multiple bloggers, or from O'Reilly, whose response was much more prominent than Beavers'. In your original paragraph above, over 40% of the text is about that single editorial -- that seems like undue emphasis to me. Although I'd revise my own suggestion to: "Josh Beavers, publisher of the Minden Press-Herald in Fleming's hometown, wrote an editorial defending Fleming's comments" to emphasize that that was the main objective of Beavers' piece.

I would rather quote than paraphrase if possible to avoid synthesis, however I want to cut down the length of the mention. I will not agree to the use of any negative blog quote as per BLP sources. I like the Beavers quote because he is a newspaper editorialist in the subject's hometown which I think gives him some standing on the issue.

• Okay, The Daily Show. Setting aside, at least for now, all question of whether the TDS segment was notable in itself, the fact remains that O'Reilly's piece was unequivocally prompted and directed at Jon Stewart/TDS, in response to the segment criticizing both Fleming and O'Reilly. O'Reilly introduces his comments by talking about Stewart, he closes his comments by talking about Stewart, and he plays and responds to multiple clips from the TDS segment. Which leads me to two arguments: a) To accurately convey the context of O'Reilly's response which we cite here, it should be mentioned that O'Reilly was responding to Stewart's attack on O'Reilly as well as on Fleming, and b) Is it really rational that The Daily Show can do a piece, and a news host can spend several minutes responding to The Daily Show, and we can include the news host's response but we can't mention what exactly he was responding to because The Daily Show is too frivolous to be mentioned here, even though it's not too frivolous for Bill O'Reilly to spend several minutes on Fox News responding to it? (Which he and other news hosts have done on MANY occasions besides this one.) It's a comedy show, on Comedy Central, but that certainly doesn't mean it's not politically relevant.

As you point out, Stewart and O'Reilly have a history together that complicates any use as a source. O'Reilly is on a news channel, analogous to a newspaper editorialist, Stewart is on Comedy Central, analogous to Cracked.com.

• I object to the idea that my suggested statement constituted synthesis. The Times-Picayune source says: "But on liberal blogs, Fleming was portrayed as insensitive to millions of working Americans who are struggling to meet expenses in the face of high unemployment and stagnant wages." I paraphrased this as "The remarks were criticized by bloggers who attacked him as being out of touch with the difficulties of lower-income Americans." That's not synthesis; that's paraphrasing. I think the Politico source simply supports that same statement. I don't understand why we would need to use only one of the Politico and Times-Picayune sources, or why, if we use Politico, we would need to state "Politico published such-and-such" instead of saying "Such-and-such" and citing Politico. Citing Politico's reporting on the blogs is not the same thing as citing the blogs themselves. I suppose if it were a choice for some reason between the two sources and the two statements, I would vote for the T-P. (For the record, though, I realize now I misread your originally suggested sentence, and it makes more sense to me now. I still think my version more accurately represents the bloggers' tone.)

I am starting to understand that you think that the blogs can be used as sources for negative comments in a BLP. They cannot, and the only possible way you can get them into this article is the way I have already shown you that I think is acceptable, using the Politico roundup. This is only my opinion, and anybody could object to their use at all. Your paraphrase is a synthesis of blog quotes, which is doubly objectionable. Also, the way you lead with your blogger synthesis of blogger opinion is very POV. I prefer my version.

• I see no reason to limit it to the Times-Picayune and the Minden Press-Herald. I agree with your summary of "the flavor of the discussion", and I feel that we should try to give the reader the most accurate impression of what happened, that we're able to write using reliable sources. Theoldsparkle (talk) 00:22, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I just mentioned that as a possible example of what I would not like to do.

Ok, so post a proposed edit and let's see. Perhaps your presentation will convince me about Stuart. I agree with paring down the long quotes, in fact, I already said that I would be fine with eliminating it altogether as undue weight.Jarhed (talk) 02:09, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

How does this quote, which is intended as humor and not fact and is taken out of context from what Fleming obviously meant, notable in the document? "Some also focused on the implication that Fleming spent $200,000 per year to "feed [his] family". Jon Stewart highlighted the remarks on the September 21 episode of The Daily Show, noting that at any of Fleming's Subway franchises, "$200,000 will buy you 40,000 feet of food." The same episode featured a satirical commercial for a charity aimed at saving millionaires from extinction." I could see how it might be notable in a Jon Stewart article as an example of his political satire. But, how is it notable for Fleming? It certainly does not underscore anything Fleming did or even the meaning of his statements and doesn't even reflect reality. Finally, editor Beavers makes a clear point that bloggers are incorrect in portraying Fleming as out of touch, "Comments of Fleming being out of touch are unfair. It's a matter of perspective. I dare say that John Fleming is more in touch with reality than any of the critics railing against him from behind their Macbook." He argues that Fleming is more in touch than most others, yet Theoldsparkle refuses to allow content to balance the (liberal)blogger POV.Politics555 (talk) 04:11, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Theoldsparkle attempts to give weight to Stewart, a comedian/satirist, based on achieving attention from FNC's O'Reilly, a best selling author, serious news analyst and highest rated news personality on TV. Oddly, he gives considerably more weight to Stewart than O'Reilly and attempts to reduce O'Reilly's importance by noting Stewart's criticism of O'Reilly but not O'Reilly's criticism of Stewart. The case for posting this article in Fleming's bio increasingly appears to be based on a very weak foundation. However, if it must be posted, the irrational, erroneous and hysterical distortion of Fleming's statements should be removed. The first paragraph adequately reflects the interview and the reader is certainly free to draw his/her own conclusions without the hyped blogger commentary and satire.Politics555 (talk) 04:41, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

On one side, you can't argue against including a quote in a BLP that came out of the subject's mouth. On the other side, it was an off the cuff remark, standard politics, and not notable enough for a mention. I'm willing to collaborate on a short NPOV mention of this issue as a compromise for not mentioning it at all. If the mention is truly NPOV, then it will help both poltical sides equally and everybody should be happy. So, let's see what Theoldsparkle proposes.Jarhed (talk) 05:17, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. Of course quoting the actual interview conversation in the first paragraph achieves that. Both sides can interpret it as they wish. If you insist on commentary, then fine as long as it comes from respected news personalities and that equal weight is given to both POVs. The problem is that the liberal POV is represented by a twisting of Fleming's words into something he obviously did not intend to say and is done so by a satirist and known highly partisan bloggers. A local editor and Bill O'Reilly represent a much more serious and notable perspective and neither is known to be partisan. Politics555 (talk) 13:29, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I consider your comments to be reasonable, and I am at present confident that we can arrive at an NPOV mention with an appropriate weight.Jarhed (talk) 15:02, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Fleming's interview statements 3

Attempting to try to keep the discussion comprehensible. It seems clear there are two central issues on which we (myself and User:Jarhed) disagree. (I'll sign my comments in each section separately for clarity.) Theoldsparkle (talk) 15:44, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Mention of Jon Stewart

My opinion is that if we mention the O'Reilly response (and I think we're in agreement that the O'Reilly response should be mentioned), then in order to accurately convey the context of his response, we should mention that he was responding to a Daily Show segment that criticized both Fleming and O'Reilly. My suggested phrasing, shortened further from what I had included in my proposed paragraph above, is: "Responding to The Daily Show's criticism of both Fleming and Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, O'Reilly agreed with Fleming that raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations would hurt the economy."

As I understand your opinion, you feel that Stewart/The Daily Show should categorically not be mentioned here for any reason, because it is a comedy program and therefore not relevant. Am I understanding you correctly? If not, please correct me. If so, I would suggest we solicit a third opinion as it seems unlikely that discussion between us will change either of our minds. Theoldsparkle (talk) 15:44, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

You understand me perfectly. It is clear to me by reading their WP articles that O'Reilly is in a different reliability category from Stewart. I am not interested in seeking arbitration on this issue and I am willing to drop both from the proposed rewrite rather than argue the point.Jarhed (talk) 17:42, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I frankly think you're wrong about this, and your reasoning--particularly your reference to reliability--baffles me. Nobody has suggested using The Daily Show as a reliable source (to say nothing of the many challenges to O'Reilly's own "reliability"). The idea that something that occurs on a comedy show cannot be notable outside of the context of the show seems very strange -- if the President of the United States were to appear on The Daily Show (which he has, several times, most recently last October) and, during his appearance, used a racist epithet, and a controversy resulted, would it be unreasonable for Wikipedia to document this controversy because Wikipedia shouldn't mention anything that happens on a silly comedy show? The argument over whether the Daily Show segment was notable in itself was one thing, but your opinion that it absolutely must not be mentioned even in order to explain something that we agreed was notable -- I find that extremely puzzling and illogical.

That being said, I will agree to exclude it, as you have done in your new proposed rewrite below. Theoldsparkle (talk) 19:33, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Quoting Stewart gives him substantial weight. Describing his back-and-forth with O'Reilly gives him substantial weight. If you agree with me that Stewart is a satirist, then you should also agree with me that negative comments from him do not belong in a BLP. I urge you to review the BLP policy because I think compliance is important.Jarhed (talk) 22:11, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Presenting/citing bloggers' remarks

Here we seem to have, perhaps, more confusion than actual disagreement. My view is this: Bloggers made comments. Third-party sources, namely Politico and the Times-Picayune, reported that bloggers made comments. We should not quote or cite any particular blogger directly, but we should say, "Bloggers made comments," and we should cite Politico's and TP's stories about the bloggers making comments.

In the TP article, the article stated: "But on liberal blogs, Fleming was portrayed as insensitive to millions of working Americans who are struggling to meet expenses in the face of high unemployment and stagnant wages." I think this is the fact that we should include here, because it seems to me to show most accurately what happened, and we should cite the TP article for that fact. Obviously, because of copyright, we can't use the same words as in the article, and so, we need to write new words that communicate the same information. My suggested phrasing, intended to communicate only the information from that specific sentence in that specific source (and, again, revised from what I had previously suggested), is: "Several bloggers claimed the remarks showed that Fleming was out of touch with the economic difficulties faced by many Americans." If you think this does not accurately convey the same information as the sentence from the TP article, please explain what discrepancy you see.

This is not WP:SYNTHESIS, because synthesis involves combining information from multiple sources, and I am only talking about using this one piece of information from this one source. (The Times-Picayune may have synthesized the information by looking at multiple blogs and aggregating their comments, but since, as far as I know, the TP qualifies as a reliable source, we are allowed to take and use the information they report as reliable fact. We are not committing synthesis by reporting a single fact from a reliable source.) I think the Politico article says the same thing that the TP does, and could be used as an additional citation for the same information, but if citing two sources for this information will inevitably lead to objections of synthesis, I would accept using and citing only the Times-Picayune source. Theoldsparkle (talk) 15:44, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

You and I are in complete agreement on this issue. The bloggers are not suitable in any case for negative comments in a BLP, however, I am willing to cite the Politico roundup for the purpose of giving flavor to the incident, provided that such mention is balanced by a countervaling source, such as O'Reilly.Jarhed (talk) 17:45, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

My preference for the source for blogger info is the Politico article, because it seems comprehensive, but any similiar source is fine with me.Jarhed (talk) 17:51, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

While I think we can reach a satisfactory compromise on this matter, I would like to know whether you still feel that paraphrasing, as I did above, is a violation of WP:SYNTHESIS or WP:OR, because it would clearly be helpful to my future editing on other topics to be able to recognize whether I am violating those guidelines. Theoldsparkle (talk) 19:33, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I personally do not see you violating anything. I guess I would just say the obvious, that each of us has a POV, and by editing here we agree to try to reach NPOV. It is a difficult task, but like many things, just because we can't reach perfection doesn't mean that we shouldn't try.Jarhed (talk) 22:19, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Rewrite #3

Fleming's remarks were widely reported and resulted in considerable comentary. Bruce Alpert of the The Times-Picayune reported the substantial response of the liberal blogosphere thus: "insensitive to millions of working Americans who are struggling to meet expenses in the face of high unemployment and stagnant wages". Conservative sources such as Drudge and O'Reilly vigorously defended Fleming's remarks, with Josh Beavers, publisher of the Minden Press-Herald in Fleming's hometown, writing: "His sentiment was only that the more taxes he pays the fewer people he can employ. High taxes on business owners thwart economic activity."

I think this content is generally acceptable, but that the wording can be improved. My counter-proposal would be as follows:

Fleming's remarks were widely reported and resulted in considerable commentary. Bruce Alpert of Louisiana newspaper The Times-Picayune reported that "on liberal blogs, Fleming was portrayed as insensitive to millions of working Americans who are struggling to meet expenses in the face of high unemployment and stagnant wages." Conservative sources including Bill O'Reilly [and the Drudge Report] defended Fleming's remarks; Josh Beavers, publisher of the Minden Press-Herald in Fleming's hometown, wrote an editorial which stated, "[Fleming's] sentiment was only that the more taxes he pays the fewer people he can employ. High taxes on business owners thwart economic activity."

The mention of the Drudge Report should be excluded unless a citation is provided; I haven't seen that citation. Theoldsparkle (talk) 19:33, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I am fine with your revision. Drudge is mentioned in Alpert's report.Jarhed (talk) 19:50, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I will replace the current text with this one, adding the second citation to Alpert. Thank you again for discussing this with me until we reached a resolution. As I said in the section above, I would still appreciate your clarifying whether your disapproval of my proposed sentence about the bloggers is based on synth/NOR grounds, because I would like to know if I've been misunderstanding those guidelines. If you don't believe there are synth/NOR issues, I would like to know what you think is wrong with that sentence. Thanks again. Theoldsparkle (talk) 21:33, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Your original edit led with a blog paraphrase that struck me wrong, but it hardly matters because we came up with what I think is a pretty good edit. If I have contributed in any positive way to this resolution, I am glad.Jarhed (talk) 21:52, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

This is much better and far more balanced. I went back and read Alpert's article and he made it very clear and emphasized that criticism was coming from liberal bloggers and gave examples. In fact, he did not even suggest that criticism came from any other source. He also gave at least one example of a conservative blogger who had the opposite POV. So, we have 3 non-partisan, credible news sources that reported it either neutrally (Alpert who is arguably left of center) or defending Fleming (O'Reilly and Beavers). The negative stories came from well-known liberal bloggers and a very liberal political satirist, all deliberately twisting the meaning of Fleming's statements about "feeding my family."Politics555 (talk) 21:24, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

If I may say, your talk page comments are a little prickly, for example, "deliberately twisting", which is what you would expect a satirist to do and hardly an offense. That's one of the reasons that I don't like citing Stewart in a poltical BLP, and it is easy to make such a case to reasonable editors. Anyway, you guys could have reached this agreement without my help. I guess I just urge you both to follow WP guidelines closely, including assuming good faith, avoiding undue weight, and striving for NPOV.Jarhed (talk) 21:52, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps, but I had to point out that if "deliberately twisting" words is satire, then it shouldn't be treated as news or fact, upon which we both agree. On the other hand, if it is done by bloggers to mislead, then it is dishonest. Either way, it needs to be accurately and fairly treated. I didn't feel the author was doing that. I think we can all agree that the current text/content is the most honest/fair/balanced/accurate version this author has used relative to the treatment of the interview. Thank you, Jarhed, for your steady hand in this.Politics555 (talk) 03:41, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

The Onion "incident"

This section may possibly give undue weight to a recent and relatively minor incident, so minor that I'd hardly classify it as an "incident" and bordering on trivia. It should be considerably pared down and integrated into the article, if kept at all. Why does the entire quote from The Onion need to be reproduced, for example? This is especially so since the WP article has nothing about Fleming after the 2010 campaign and then abrubtly devotes a whole section to this news snippet from three days ago. Voceditenore (talk) 19:30, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

completely unproportionate coverage, particularly calling it out in its own section.75.73.44.170 (talk) 17:37, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Gone. – Lionel ^(talk) 00:20, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. We don't even know that he knew about the post in advance, it could have been a clueless staffer. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:05, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

An IP just re-added an even more over the top version and silly version. [1]. I at least replaced it with the more neutral version for now, but I agree with Sarek of Vulcan, it ought to go completely. Voceditenore (talk) 20:02, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I also don't support the inclusion of this trivia - en wikipedia's policy is no longer fit for purpose. Youreallycan 20:03, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I disagree; I think it's been widely reported enough to include, as seemed to be the consensus in the BLPN discussion. I continue to find it ridiculous for people to state that the article doesn't include any other content about his activities, and then use that as a reason to take out the content that's there. By all means, feel free to write some stuff about what he's done so that what we have doesn't appear so jarring. Honestly, even if you did take out the incidents of embarrassment, it still wouldn't speak too well of him that the article has nothing to say about any accomplishments since being elected. Theoldsparkle (talk) 21:28, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I disagree with the description "widely reported" - yes, on one slow news day, several newspapers cut and pasted in a different order the content from a newswire feed, but just because something appears in a reliable source does not mean it is worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia. If this story somehow actually gains legs and consistent coverage (say during the re-election campaign he gets tagged as "Abortionplex Johnny" or embarrassing posts and their removal becomes a regular happening on his facebook page), then we could consider covering it.75.73.44.170 (talk) 02:49, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

• Removed there are an obvious consensus here that it does not belong. Darkness Shines (talk) 03:01, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I won't fight the removal but I don't know how any of you can be pleased with yourselves. The article was pretty crappy before; now it's still pretty crappy while also omitting any information about one of the most notable incidents about this guy. You care so much about avoiding an unfair impression that you're eager to take stuff out, but not enough to spend 20 minutes with a Google News Search to actually add something of value. Bravo. I just think it's pretty pathetic and hypocritical that none of you are willing to invest even a slight effort in actually improving the article, only in removing the embarrassments because they're given undue weight because there's no neutral or positive content to balance it out because nobody's interested in writing any neutral or positive content. And I'm sure we'll be back here in another few months when he's criticized for something else and it gets reported in several sources. Theoldsparkle (talk) 15:37, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I disagree with the description "widely reported" - yes, on one slow news day, several newspapers cut and pasted in a different order the content from a newswire feed, but just because something appears in a reliable source does not mean it is worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia.

This a member of the United States Congress who is so out-of-touch that he actually thought it possible that an entire mall dedicated to abortions was opening. That is newsworthy, and it was widely covered by newspapers. I attempted to reflect that newsworthy event in this article. Somehow other editors think that this is not really a notable event. Their arguments are:

• "It borders on trivia" — actually, it is highly significant and revealing about the subject of the article. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been covered by multiple national newspapers.
• "completely unproportionate coverage" — so fix the rest of the article then, rather than perversely removing the event for which the subject has received the most media coverage.
• "We don't even know that he knew about the post in advance, it could have been a clueless staffer." — this is highly speculative. I tend to think that the Congressman's office would have made some comment if that had been the case.
• "it ought to go completely" — reasoning?
• "I also don't support the inclusion of this trivia - en wikipedia's policy is no longer fit for purpose." — I don't understand this comment. What policy are you referring to?

Given the above complete absence of valid arguments for removing the material, the material should be reinstated. — goethean ॐ 22:08, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Given any evidence that he personally posted or approved that post, the material must not be reinstated. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 22:47, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

This is an arbitrary and unwarranted criteria. Ron Paul's article discusses his racist newsletters, and according to his supporters there is no evidence Paul personally wrote or approved the content of those newsletters. Gamaliel (talk) 23:56, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Completely different scenario, Gamaliel -- the newsletters went out under his name for quite some time. This was a single incident, promptly undone.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 13:51, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

What are you looking for here, a signed affidavit? — goethean ॐ 02:37, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

No, it requires a reliable published source which specifically verifies that Fleming himself posted the article and that this "incident" has had any impact on his life or poltical career. The "wide news coverage" was almost entirely in "odd stories" and snippets collections. A similar decision was made in the Barbara Boxer article concerning removal of the don't call me Ma'am "incident". Per WP:UNDUE this frivolous and trivial (albeit mildly amusing) tidbit doesn't belong in the article and frankly makes Wikipedia look silly. We're not here to record every gaffe or perceived gaffe that a person has ever made in their life. "In the news", i.e. picked up by a wire service and thus repeated in multiple outlets doesn't equal significance. Voceditenore (talk) 15:08, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

The "clueless staffer" argument is bunk. The comment was posted to Fleming's Facebook account, thus it is relevant to his biography. Events that have to do with my house, my car, my email address, and my Facebook account are my responsibility, not that of a "clueless staffer". And as far as your homegrown media critique goes, you need to come up with a more objective way of distinguishing between what you deem to be trivia and relevant, article-worthy facts. Because so far, your criteria appears to be: "I don't like it". — goethean ॐ 16:02, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Oh, no, I _love_ it. :-) I just know we can't put it in the article. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:05, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

It's complete trivia and totally undue - partisans think it makes him look an idiot , a fool, and thats why they want to include it. Its given as much weight in the article as his complete business career and he owned and ran thirty three shops - John_Fleming_(U.S._politician)#Business_career - en wikipedia policy and guidelines are clearly not fit for purpose. Youreallycan 16:13, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

If you want to start calling people names, we can do that.

Also, who is stopping you from adding content to the article about Fleming's 30 shops? Other than the fact that the Facebook incident has received tons more coverage in a wide variety of reliable sources. — goethean ॐ 17:03, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Sarek's condition has no force beyond his own opinion that that's what is required. I continue to think it merits inclusion, on the basis of widespread coverage. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 16:19, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Ditto re Sarek:-) On a more serious note, the primary principle is undue weight and a secondary one we're not a newspaper or a diary. Where is there any evidence of the lasting significance of this "fact"? Many utterly trivial "facts" get a lot of news coverage, especially if they're amusing. That's not a criteria for including them in a Wikipedia article. What reliable source has written about the impact or ramifications of this "fact" apart from simply reporting it in passing in the "ha ha" section? Find me some analysis of the incident and its ramifications beyond the day it hit the internet, and I might change my mind. Voceditenore (talk) 16:32, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Why is this "required"? Why "must" we remove this? People here are talking about this like its some sort of established standard when all I see here is some arbitrary goalpost people pulled out of their ass. There's a lot of assertions, but not a lot of actual arguments. Gamaliel (talk) 17:27, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

See WP:BLP and WP:OR in particular as those intersect in We don't even know that he knew about the post in advance, it could have been a clueless staffer." — this is highly speculative. I tend to think that the Congressman's office would have made some comment if that had been the case. As speculative content about a living person's relationship to this material, it cannot be in the article. 75.73.44.170 (talk) 15:01, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

False. What is not speculative is that the link with comment was posted to the Congressman's website. That's what the article said before it was deleted. Factual, well-documented, relevant content has been removed from the article. A valid argument as to why has yet to be articulated. — goethean ॐ 18:49, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

can we be any more passive in the construction to imply this particular living person was responsible when we have no sources to verify?75.73.44.170 (talk) 03:30, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

The post was essentially made in his name. It was posted by his Facebook account, under his name, which is what our article said. If he has made no statement since to disassociate himself from the post, it's exactly the same as a press release containing a statement from him that was actually drafted by a staffer or publicist with his approval, as is 100% normal (i.e., when the White House issues this press release as a "Statement from Vice President Biden", we can write on Wikipedia that "Vice President Biden said in a statement that..." even though it's very unlikely that Biden actually wrote those words). The idea that we can't connect Fleming to a statement made by his office in his name that he has not disavowed responsibility for is just ridiculous.Theoldsparkle (talk) 16:58, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles about living people most certainly should not be promoting Have you stopped beating your wife? logic. If this was really impactful to him to politics to anything, you would be able to provide additional coverage. 75.73.44.170 (talk) 14:06, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

You are not making the least bit of sense. What was removed from the article was indisputably factual, and not at all a loaded question, which is what you imply. Dozens of newspaper and magazine articles on the incident are available for citation, so your other claim (to the extent that I can decipher it) is equally devoid of merit. — goethean ॐ 18:59, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

The essence of Theoldsparkle's reasoning is indeed a loaded question "Why hasnt he denied that he posted the message????????" and taking the lack of denial as proof that he is responsible. BLP content requires far better sourcing than a lack of a denial. But even if he did post it and even though there was coverage in a reliable sources (during a single news cycle), the "incident" still falls sooooooooo far short of even reaching the level of 'trivial' that any coverage in this article will completely fail WP:UNDUE. 75.73.44.170 (talk) 04:17, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

(during a single news cycle)

That's what we call "moving the goalposts". There's no mention of "multiple newscycles" in Wikipedia policy. The Onion article was posted to Fleming's Facebook account. The incident was covered by several newspapers. That fact is relevant to his biography. But the content was removed from the article. But please go ahead and concoct further post-hoc rationalizations about why the most noted incident in this man's life must be suppressed from his biography. — goethean ॐ 16:02, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, it seems like we're making up requirements as we go along here. Gamaliel (talk) 17:05, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

We aren't talking about a situation where Joe says "Fleming did X", and Fleming does not confirm or deny it, and it's suggested Fleming's lack of denial should be reported as confirmation that he did it. We are talking about a public statement issued in Fleming's name by Fleming's office, and reporting that as "this statement was issued in Fleming's name by Fleming's office." I'll repeat that any argument that we are leaping to conclusions by addressing something in Fleming's article that was posted by Fleming's Facebook account is inherently ridiculous. Theoldsparkle (talk) 16:50, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

the "goalposts arent moving" - its that the content fails just about every guideline and policy - except for the fact that it is verifiable. The suggested content fails WP:NOTNEWS, WP:BLP, WP:NPOV/WP:UNDUE and WP:OR - both as the policies are individually written and how they come together in their intent. "erifiability on Wikipedia is the ability to cite reliable sources that directly support the information in an article. All information in Wikipedia must be verifiable, but because other policies and guidelines also influence content, verifiability does not guarantee inclusion. " 75.73.44.170 (talk) 12:49, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Okay, let me know when you are ready to create an argument and present evidence rather than throwing out a list of policies with little to no relevance. God only knows how you plan to (ab)use WP:OR. — goethean ॐ 19:07, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

The OR is coming from your mouth: "This a member of the United States Congress who is so out-of-touch that he actually thought it possible that an entire mall dedicated to abortions was opening. " I read at least a dozen of the articles about this "incident" and the only place that analysis commentary appeared is from your pen - the articles were all merely cut and paste rearrangements of the wire story stating that the "incident" happened and was quickly taken down. And your reasoning also included "We don't even know that he knew about the post in advance, it could have been a clueless staffer." — this is highly speculative. I tend to think that the Congressman's office would have made some comment if that had been the case." and again, that is simply your personal reasoning, not backed by any reliable third party sources. BLP requires that the material must have solid sourcing behind the claims. 75.73.44.170 (talk) 04:41, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedians are allowed to employ their powers of reasoning when discussing whether to include content (try it sometime). As WP:OR says in big letters at the top of the page, what is not allowed is for Wikipedia to publish the original thought of Wikipedians. According, everything that I advocate including in the article is well-sourced, and not original. Thus your WP:OR argument is bunk. — goethean ॐ 15:31, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

"All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, rather than to the original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors." We have no third party sources making any claims or analysis about this "incident" - and the only reason for placing this content in absence of such analysis in such a prominent position in the article is push your personal interpretation of the non-event. 75.73.44.170 (talk) 16:12, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

WP:OR doesn't cover talk pages. Everything that I and others argued for including in the article is well-referenced. The reason for including it is because it is the most noted aspect of the man's life. If you have further questions, I suggest that you take them to a page which discusses Wikipedia policy. — goethean ॐ 17:57, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

you have made it clear that you are not here to create a factual, NPOV article, but simply to push your political and personal views about this politician. Real political gaffes affect people's careers (Macaca (term)), lives (2003_Mission_Accomplished_speech#In_culture) and last longer than a single news cycle (heck of a job, Brownie) 75.73.44.170 (talk) 18:35, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Look, your side has won the conflict (if not the argument) — the content has been removed from the article. I'm not sure what you're so angry about. — goethean ॐ 18:53, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm "angry" (to the extent that that is an appropriate description) that partitions partisans on all sides are attempting to utilize Wikipedia's prominence as a free propaganda outlet for their political campaigns (even more than usual because its an election year).75.73.44.170 (talk) 19:37, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Partitions? You mean partisans? — goethean ॐ 00:56, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

ewwww!!! i did something embarrassing on the web - you better make sure that gets into my Wikipedia article! 75.73.44.170 (talk) 01:54, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I've raised this on ANI, as the lack of AGF seems to be getting out of hand. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:09, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

• Well, you know you're not going to get much traction out of that. FWIW, I agree with the removal: it's a tiny incident of the single kind and keeping it is giving it undue weight. BTW, I tweaked the phrasing of those 30 sandwich shops a bit. Drmies (talk) 03:54, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Saw this on ANI and had to comment. While this is undoubtedly hilarious it really isn't that notable. It's a facebook post that made him look foolish. Seriously, when it comes to a persons biography I don't think we need to include facebook posts. It's clearly undue weight, and while I love this story, it isn't appropriate. It seems that this doesn't serve any purpose but to humiliate him. I mean there isn't even a section that discusses his stance on abortion. Is he pro-life and if so to what degree? If this facebook post is really so central to who he is, why haven't those who are trying to add it done so in a larger context? AniMate 03:29, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Just to chime in here, I came to John Fleming's page for one purpose only: too look up sourcing information for the "The Onion" incident. Like most Americans who know of John Fleming, I would never have known of him at all if not for that incident, whether or not it was of his making. You can claim it's trivial, but I would not be surprised if the lion's share of visitors are looking for the same thing. If it's something he's known for that has been widely reported in media, then it needs to be addressed. If you want to debunk it, you can state that "many newspapers reported on this incident but there was no corroboration" or something like that. But don't pretend the incident never happened! It's the number one thing this guy is known for nationally, for goodness sake.TricksterWolf (talk) 05:17, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

I re-inserted this incident under "2012 abortion statement", as a single sentence with two citations, which I think should be the correct place for it. Certainly, anything much more than one or two sentences would violate WP:UNDUE, but not including it at all violates WP:NPOV. The subject of the article got his first wide national attention in the media via this statement. Bearian (talk) 19:46, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Bearian, Fleming's first national attention was with his H. Res. 615 that led eventually to millions to respond to his website after this interview on Fox News. Therefore you case that the "Onion incident" was his first wide national attention, you are incorrect. This negates your argument of NPOV. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN2tI49_5EI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ofHF90VKqo 68.34.117.152 (talk) 03:29, 7 April 2013 (UTC)Politics555 (talk) 03:36, 7 April 2013 (UTC) As many here have stated, this is an issue that has been discussed endlessly and decided and should not be brought up again for the many reasons expressed here. Nobody has ever documented that Fleming personally made this post or link and it is a trivial incident. It is quite clear this is not a NPOV as Bearian even admits on his user page that he has "potential" (political)biases and he is a "progressive Democrat,"admits that he is or has been a paid Democratic political consultant, and as such obviously opposes the very conservative political positions of Fleming. It is improper and against Wikipedia rules to use this medium to settle political scores. Neither Berian nor anybody else even bothers to mention or cite Fleming's position on abortion, which is far more important. I suggest we strive for neutrality and stay within the rules as outlined. Politics555 (talk) 06:26, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I also suggest that an administrator get involved as a lack of NPOV seems to continue to be a driver of this discussion. Some continue to focus this minor incident that may put Fleming in a negative light while ignoring his political and policy issues that are far more important as a sitting member of congress.Politics555 (talk) 19:10, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Trivial "incident" of negligible biographical value - thus UNDUE as presented. Collect (talk) 22:59, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

This insertion is inappropriate in a BLP as clearly outlined. Still have one or two who insist on inappropriately dropping the "Onion Incident" back it. Editors have been very clear that his is trivial and unworthy of a BLP. Joapedia (talk) 02:06, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

In 2017, when the ability to distinguish between real and fake news has become a dominant political topic in the US, as has a related focus on sources and misrepresentation, the promotion of a satirical source as fact by a government official while he was member of Congress is notable and should be included. I note, too, that no consensus was achieved when this was discussed throughout 2012-2013, and yet those in favor of deleting it problematically removed it entirely from the article. Shelfpea (talk) 11:47, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

I have consequently integrated the information back into the article as a few sourced sentences under this specific frame. Shelfpea (talk) 11:57, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Shelfpea, there have been no new developments on this topic. The recent fad discussion of "fake news" bears nothing on this. The media reports suggest that the post was quickly taken down when the satire site was discovered by the poster. There was no indication that Fleming or his staff ever purposely attempted to deceive or mislead the public. In fact, the media was unable to establish whether Fleming made or approved the post. The media tone was non-serious. This issue shows undue weight to that content in 2012 and even less today.Tomuchtalk (talk) 22:21, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Given how much time has passed since the 2012-2013 discussion, seems like it might be better to create a new subsection for this discussion. I'm copying the above three comments and pasting them below. Please comment there Shelfpea (talk) 00:30, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

The Onion "incident" - 2017

As almost four years have passed since the last major discussion of this point and a number of points have changed, I've started this new subsection for an updated discussion. Please comment here! The following three comments from 2017 are copied and pasted from the above section, so that we don't lose anything. Let me note that the 2012-2013 discussion of this did not yield consensus. And, of course, even if it had, consensus can and does change. I'll continue this comment below the following three pasted in. Shelfpea (talk) 00:30, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

In 2017, when the ability to distinguish between real and fake news has become a dominant political topic in the US, as has a related focus on sources and misrepresentation, the promotion of a satirical source as fact by a government official while he was member of Congress is notable and should be included. I note, too, that no consensus was achieved when this was discussed throughout 2012-2013, and yet those in favor of deleting it problematically removed it entirely from the article. Shelfpea (talk) 11:47, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

I have consequently integrated the information back into the article as a few sourced sentences under this specific frame. Shelfpea (talk) 11:57, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Shelfpea, there have been no new developments on this topic. The recent fad discussion of "fake news" bears nothing on this. The media reports suggest that the post was quickly taken down when the satire site was discovered by the poster. There was no indication that Fleming or his staff ever purposely attempted to deceive or mislead the public. In fact, the media was unable to establish whether Fleming made or approved the post. The media tone was non-serious. This issue shows undue weight to that content in 2012 and even less today.Tomuchtalk (talk) 22:21, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Continuing on from above -- I suggest that several points make including this fact even more important now than previously. First, as I mentioned in my initial comment on this talk page, the ability to distinguish between real and fake news has become a dominant political topic in the US; politicians' media and technology literacies are key components of that. This includes their ability to evaluate sources and what they consider worth sharing in social media and other sites. Second, the politician in question, John Fleming, has since become the deputy assistant secretary for health technology in the Health and Human Services department of the US. This emphasis on technology makes his own level of technology literacy notable and important for readers and scholars consulting Wikipedia. Further, the Onion article in question was specifically about a healthcare issue, making his sharing it as fact doubly notable. Further along those lines, I want to note that, as far as I can determine, he is the only member of the US Congress to share this as fact, despite this being a satiric piece many individuals shared as fact. Third, the incident not only has reliable contemporaneous news sources, tertiary works by scholars cite it as significant. Note that the latter of these is from 2014. With regard to the question of undue weight, my understanding -- and I would appreciate it if other editors or admins would weigh in :) -- is that undue weight is primarily a concern where there are minority and majority perspectives on a subject, which is not the case here. Given all of these points, including this incident improves Wikipedia. Shelfpea (talk) 00:30, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

As for others who may have been misled by satirical sites directly or indirectly, there are quite a few: Sen. Mitch McConnell in 2012 https://www.wired.com/2013/02/mcconnell-duffel-blog/, Capitol Hill staffers https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/the-onion-tweets-screams-and-gunfire--wheres-the-humor/2011/09/29/gIQASpCI7K_blog.html Rachel Maddow http://www.theblaze.com/news/2011/02/01/rachel-maddow-slams-conservatives-sarah-palin-for-fake-story-on-satirical-website/, Suzy Parker of WP http://www.mediaite.com/online/parody-website-fools-the-washington-post-into-thinking-sarah-palin-heading-to-al-jazeera/, scores of people responded to the "Abortiplex" satire a year before it was posted on Fleming's FB site http://splitsider.com/2011/05/very-smart-people-think-the-onions-article-on-planned-parenthoods-abotionplex-is-real/, DARE https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/05/04/d-a-r-e-gets-duped-by-anti-pot-satire/ several major news sites http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2995840/posts. Satirical websites were little known by most until around 2012 when they became infamous. Since they are better known, people are wiser to them. People who are busy, such as a Congressman or his/her staff and can easily be misled unless they know it is a satirical site. Again, the mistake was apparently discovered quite quickly and no media could establish who in Fleming's office actually posted the FB article. You mention Fleming moving to HHS in IT. As you can see some of the most seasoned journalists have posted or reacted to well-camouflaged satirical articles. From Wikipedia, itself, there is a long list of outlets and individuals who have reacted to "The Onion" https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Onion&action=edit&section=15. Satire should not be confused with "fake news." Satire is created for the purpose to entertain and demonstrate a moral value---"the emperor has no clothes." "Fake news" as it has been made famous by POTUS Trump is considered to be for the purpose to deliberately mislead. The "fake news" argument fails to give this article weight. Again, there is nothing new in this discussion and is given undue weight and should be removed.Tomuchtalk (talk) 01:38, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi, I'm puzzled by your response as it doesn't deal substantively with the points I made regarding media and tech literacies, the topical relevance of the circulation of accurate healthcare information given Fleming's current position, and the additional tertiary sources I cited, among others. None of these were included in the previous discussions of 2012-2013. Further, consensus was not reached during the earlier discussion, and regardless, consensus can change. Finally, the policy on undue weight seems to apply primarily to situations where there are majority and minority viewpoints; this is not such a case. Shelfpea (talk) 23:39, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Actually, I dealt with all that you said, but you did not respond to anything I posted. Here is another very savvy and literate media person who has even worked with The Onion and he was taken in as well, Anderson Cooper http://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2015/05/21/ac-sot-ridiculist-tweet-clickhole-satire-site.cnn/video/playlists/ac360-ridiculist/. The number of media who reported The Onion "incident" is immaterial. They were all repeating the same, minor original story. There was never any investigation or added information. More important is the fact that such satirical content can look enough like a real story, especially considering how bizarre true facts can be, that even the most media and IT-literate can react.You imply that Fleming may be too incompetent to serve at HHS in IT. Again, it was never established that Fleming personally posted the article. If that is how you feel, are you also suggesting that Suzy Parker of the WP, Rachel Maddow, and Anderson Cooper are too incompetent to serve as major media editors and anchors, or that Sen. McConnell should step down as majority leader of the US Senate? Have you posted such to their BLPs? News cycles are fast and 24/7. A publication like The Onion, that often brags about who and how many times people take seriously, can ensnare anybody. So, unless a public figure took that information and deliberately promoted it knowing it is a satirical site at that time, there is simply no there, there. It only means that Parker, Maddow, Cooper and Fleming are humans. What is interesting is that Fleming was one of the original co-founders of the House Freedom Caucus that is currently in the news about current events surrounding health care legislation. Yet, there is no mention of this in his BLP. You are focusing on this Onion trivia and completely ignoring important facts and activities for a Congressman who served for eight years. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a trivia storehouse. If you are serious about improving the article why not spend some time actually researching the Congressman and submit content that actually improves the article and improves the encyclopedia? Tomuchtalk (talk) 00:25, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

One of your references says the following, "Although the post was quickly deleted, a screengrab of the goofy gaffe was picked up by the blog Literally Unbelievable. At least one Facebook user caught the blooper before its removal." It is obvious that whoever posted that article quickly realized his or her mistake---not a notable event. Tomuchtalk (talk) 22:48, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Please don't assign motivations to me that I haven't expressed. WP:NOTE describes notability as a test for articles rather than content within articles. This is verifiable information from reliable sources about an event that has been highlighted by scholars as an example of the difficulties of distinguishing differences in news sources in the abundant media information environment. See, for example, https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Conservative_Walks_Into_a_Bar.html?id=_cX48mPuCicC and https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/28352. Including this improves Wikipedia. (Note that I haven't added the two references -- which I cited in my earlier comment above -- to the article yet as I am unsure of the policy/community norms on editing an article while discussing it on the talk page.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shelfpea (talk • contribs) 12:00, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Shelfpea, the number of references is immaterial when it is the same information. There was no investigation, no interviews, no follow up events, nothing. This is a trivial "incident," does not improve the article, and should be removed as it was years ago. With all of the talk content, you have really made no logical case why it should and you failed to address any of the questions I posed to you. Tomuchtalk (talk) 01:31, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Another very important discussion is WP:BLP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons. First, the content must be written conservatively and cautiously, content that is appropriate for an encyclopedia not a tabloid. There are also three core tests for WP:BLP: 1. NPOV 2. Verifiability 3. No original research. Posting this content fails #2 as the media verified that The Onion article was posted on Fleming's Facebook, but it never verified that Fleming posted it. The burden of proof lies with the editor posting as to facts, especially on WP:BLP. Tomuchtalk (talk) 02:17, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Intro

Via OTRS, I have received a request that the sentence "Fleming defeated Democratic candidate Paul Carmouche in the 2008 election by a margin of 356 votes" be cut from the lead. Opinions, anyone? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:18, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

"heavily Republican district" 2012 election is incorrect

The district is 2:1 Democratic though the Cook PVI rating is R+11. Joapedia (talk) 14:54, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

2013 budget statements

Fleming never said he intended or was "comfortable" with cuts to the military. On the contrary he made a number of statements criticizing the cuts to the military, some which are cited here. The Forbes article inappropriately implies that Fleming was "comfortable" with cuts to the military, but he never said or even suggested that.Joapedia (talk) 23:38, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Business Career

Language improved and made more precise. You can't be thrown our of a franchise, only a store owned within the franchise. Joapedia (talk) 03:04, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

After further research on this part of the article I found this to be inappropriate for a BLP. It is not a tabloid WP:NOTATABLOID and unsupported allegation of a crime not leading to anything WP:BLPCRIME. Joapedia (talk) 12:09, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Reversion

I reverted the deletion of sourced text. WP:BLPCRIME and WP:NPOV do not require that we eliminate all allegations, only the flimsily sourced and defamatory ones. Rather, they require that we post as many of the supported facts and defenses as is reasonably possible. In this case, there is an accusation and a refutation of the same. Bearian (talk) 13:57, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

It is nonsense to post in a BLP an unsubstantiated allegation that nobody even claims the living person is even involved in. I will ask editors to weigh in. Joapedia (talk) 14:38, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

The edit makes an allegation of a criminal act which was unsupported with regard to the subject of the BLP - this is not an article on Subway complaints, whether valid or not (and this one appears quite invalid) , but one about a person, and tabloid claims which do not directly relate to the person do not belong. The accusation was not about Fleming, and thus is not of any proper weight in the BLP. Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:55, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Collect seems to be on the money. To other editors, what is the reason for including this info in a WP:BLP? Maybe I am missing something. GeorgeLouis (talk) 16:53, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

I'll go along with consensus for now, but I'd like to hear from other admins first. Bearian (talk) 17:30, 10 April 2013 (UTC) P.S. I also accept its removal, by an uninvolved User, during the pendancy of this discussion, per usual procedure. Bearian (talk) 17:37, 10 April 2013 (UTC) P.P.S. A business owner is alway involved in what their employees do -- see Respondeat superior. Bearian (talk) 17:39, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Not on Wikipedia. Accusations of criminal acts must be exceedingly strongly sourced per WP:BLP in every single caxse. Here the accusation is not even directly relevant to the person, is weakly sourced, and appears to be one step away from simple rumour. Cheers.Collect (talk) 23:19, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Reputation

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2013/the-35-best-times-someone-on-facebook-thought-the-onion-was-real/

1. 16

Not sure if this is true... can anyone confirm this?

74.112.111.34 (talk) 18:58, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Proposed Edits

I'm Becky Mancuso and I work for BrabenderCox [2]. John Fleming is included among our clients, and I would like to submit information regarding his legislative career to be considered for inclusion in the "Tenure" section of this Wikipedia page.

I have been studying Wikipedia's policies and guidelines and will do my very best to abide by them, and seek help wherever necessary. My edits will be restricted to talk pages, and I will not engage in directly editing any page with which I have a conflict of interest. Instead, I will volunteer information on the talk pages, and ask for Wikipedians' help.

If you want to contact me, please leave a message on my talk page [3], or e-mail me at bmancuso@brabendercox.com.

Please consider adding the following legislative initiatives into Fleming's "Tenure" section so as to best represent the full breadth of his legislative career.

Mrsmancuso (talk) 22:22, 28 October 2013 (UTC)mrsmancusoMrsmancuso (talk) 22:22, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

The edits, with the exception of the very lengthy quote in the first bulleted list item, are fine for you add yourself. I don't think the long quote contributes to the article about the politician and have added a strikeouts to the section to illustrate which part I don't feel should be added. Please go ahead and make the other changes yourself, and feel free to remove the strikeout tags and resubmit an edit request if you disagree with my evaluation. Neil916 (Talk) 20:03, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Proposed Edits II

I'm Becky Mancuso and I work for BrabenderCox [4]. John Fleming is included among our clients, and I would like to submit information regarding his legislative career to be considered for inclusion in the "Tenure" section of this Wikipedia page.

I have been studying Wikipedia's policies and guidelines and will do my very best to abide by them, and seek help wherever necessary. My edits will be restricted to talk pages, and I will not engage in directly editing any page with which I have a conflict of interest without the approval of a Wikipedia editor. Instead, I will volunteer information on the talk pages, and ask for Wikipedians' help.

If you want to contact me, please leave a message on my talk page [5], or e-mail me at bmancuso@brabendercox.com.

Please consider adding the following update into Fleming's "Tenure" section so as to best represent the full breadth of his legislative career.

2013 opening of the health insurance marketplace

On October 23, 2013, Fleming was the first member of the House of Representatives to call for the resignation of Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, following widespread problems with the government’s online opening of the health insurance marketplace.

In a letter to President Obama, Fleming cited “uncertainty, confusion and incompetence that has riddled the Health Insurance Marketplace” and called on President Obama “to hold Secretary Sebelius accountable for the fiasco that is Healthcare.gov and ask for her resignation.” Thirty-two other members of Congress joined Fleming in signing the letter. and Mrsmancuso (talk) 16:20, 20 November 2013 (UTC)mrsmancuso

That would give undue weight to him and his role. Most, if not all, GOP congress members have done the same. Bearian (talk) 22:17, 20 November 2013 (UTC) P.S. A dog biting a man, or a GOP politician attacking Obama, is not news, and certainly not encyclopedic. If he criticized a fellow GOP member, it would be like a man biting a dog. Bearian (talk) 22:20, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

References

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DOMA and LGBT

A previous edit contained incomplete information. There was no mention of the laws in effect at the time of this incident, DOMA and state law prohibiting same sex marriages. None of the previous content was removed. There is one correction to it, quotations added as "private ceremony" was a quoted statement, not a fact. My edits contain no commentary, simply additional facts to preserve NPOV. Gamaliel should assume good faith from other editors and not vandalize others' edits. Furthermore the three-revert rule should be observed as well as WP:ALIVE, WP:BLP and WP:LIVE. Advise Gamaliel to review rules on warring edits and vandalism. I welcome WP:ADMIN. Politics555 (talk) 02:45, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, but your edits were not improvements. The added material seems to be in part synthesis and in part undue. BLP has no relevance here, so I'm not sure why you're citing it. Neutrality^talk 04:24, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

They are not an "improvement" when the facts don't agree with you POV. Wikipedia doesn"t work like that. You don't get to "check pick" your facts. Politics555 (talk) 08:34, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Politics555: You must obtain consensus before restoring challenged material, especially that which has been challenged by multiple editors. Neutrality^talk 05:10, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Why are you discussing DOMA or state laws banning same-sex marriage when there is no evidence, from these sources, that the ceremony represented a marriage? Are you so devoted to condemning the private love lives of two Americans (one of whom voluntarily put their life on the line in defense of our nation) as to attempt to (wrongly) portray them as lawbreakers? NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 05:47, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

You obviously have a very specific POV you are pushing here, that is quite clear. To be sure, "An Army chaplain has performed the first same-sex nuptial ceremony on a military base--one involving two lesbian soldiers" is the opening line of the article at http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/army-chaplain-performs-first-ever-military-same-sex-nuptial-ceremony-chapel-fort-polk. What does nuptial ceremony mean but marriage? There was never a claim of any other type of religious ceremony. Your slight of hand argument is silly. Such a ceremony, according to very reliable open sources was not authorized by the military, was against state law, and violated DOMA. I have not removed any of the existing content, only added important facts that were completely left out to complete the facts, though they may be inconvenient to your POV. Politics555 (talk) 08:34, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

You obviously have a very specific POV of homophobia and anti-LGBT bias. CNSNews is not a reliable source; it is an overtly-conservative house organ for the radical right. Happily, we have an indisputable reliable source which disagrees, and is currently cited in the article. Your claim that the ceremony "was against state law, and violated DOMA" is not supported by any reliable sources, and indeed, it would be a violation of several policies for our article to say that two people violated state and federal laws when no credible reliable source says any such thing. Unless you have anything else here, the consensus is pretty clear that your edits have been rejected on policy and consensus grounds. Conservapedia is thataway if you're interested in pandering to the vanishing anti-gay lobby. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 08:51, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

On Wikipedia NorthBySouthBaranof, you alone, don't get to decide what are "good" news sources and what are "bad." It is clear by your name-calling and obvious political POV from statements, that you wish to censor opposing views. The First amendmendment dictates that opposing political viewpoints, even if you may find them obnoxious, are allowed and even encouraged in our system. I am sure the most editors and administrators of Wikipedia would agree. It is okay to be biased in your thinking, but it is not okay to censor others in the public, open source domain for having opposing views.Politics555 (talk) 14:15, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

It's not censorship to adhere to reliable sourcing standards, which direct us to use high-quality reliable sources that have a mainstream reputation for fair-minded reporting. Just as Media Matters for America is overtly progressive and notable for an explicit liberal bias in its material, CNSNews is overtly conservative and notable for an explicit right-wing bias in its material. Thus, as Wikipedians, we view both sites as questionable, at best, sources because anything they publish is likely to be significantly slanted to one side or the other. If you had been a leftist clamoring to use DailyKos as a source, my response would be the same as it was in this case: that the proposed source is unacceptable. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 17:05, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Request for Comment: 2017 discussion on The Onion "incident."

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Summary---There is consensus to support inclusion of the debated topic to the article in proper context .

Details:--Completely discounting votes cum opinions coming from single purpose accounts and canvassed UAC(s) ---the supporters of inclusion have outvoted the opposers roughly in a 2:1 ratio.The point that the incident is presented a minimalistic form backed up by reliable sources looks a good argument.And this does not seem to violate the policy of WP:WEIGHT and WP:UNDUE.Winged Blades ^Godric 15:42, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

---

There was lengthy discussion in 2012/13 regarding a brief posting of a link to a satire site (The Onion) on Congressman Fleming's Facebook page. Though it was never determined whether Fleming or a staff member actually posted the link, it was reported as one of many accidental references to satirical sites by politicians, editors and news anchors. Ultimately it was determined that it was not suitable for the article and has been deleted since then. There has been no further disclosures or incidents, but a single editor has posted it again to the article creating a disagreement as to whether it would improve the article when no new information or incidents have been reported. I request comment from other editors as to whether the new posting of the same information from 2012 should be re-added to the article.Tomuchtalk (talk) 14:57, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

It is important to note that there is considerable content about Congressman Fleming that has not been added to the article that could improve it. For instance, Fleming was one of the original cofounders of the House Freedom Caucus that is in the news today relative to the potential repeal/replace the Affordable Care Act. Yet, no editor has added that notable information.Tomuchtalk (talk) 15:00, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

There's stopping you from adding it, if you have adequate sources. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 17:54, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

• I was pinged--thanks. I fully support Neutrality's restoration. The sources are good, and the content concise. Drmies (talk) 17:09, 1 April 2017 (UTC)
• Support restoration. It was widely reported in reliable sources, and coverage in the article isn't excessive compared to other events in his career. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 17:54, 1 April 2017 (UTC)
• Comment I was notified of this discussion as a previous particpant. I refer you to my comments above from 2012 in the section The Onion "incident". They haven't changed. This so-called "incident" is utterly trivial. The primary principle is undue weight and a secondary one we're not a newspaper or a diary. Where is there any evidence of the lasting significance of this "fact"? Many utterly trivial "facts" get a lot of news coverage, especially if they're amusing, and this was mildly amusing. That's not a criteria for including them in a Wikipedia article. What reliable source has since written about the impact or ramifications of this "fact" apart from simply reporting it in passing in the "ha ha" section? It certainly doesn't deserve its own section, especially since nowhere else are his views on abortion or Planned Parenthood discussed or even mentioned. I personally think it makes Wikipedia look silly. But, hey, that's nothing new. Voceditenore (talk) 03:56, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
• Support restoration/inclusion. This is a well-sourced, concise description. Significance markers have increased since the 2012-2013 talk discussion that failed to yield a clear consensus: Scholars reference the event in examining the difficulties of distinguishing differences in news sources in the abundant media information environment. (E.g., https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Conservative_Walks_Into_a_Bar.html?id=_cX48mPuCicC and https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/28352. These should be added to the article following the RfC.) Contextual significance has also changed: media sources and media literacy have become increasingly important in US politics, and Fleming now serves as deputy assistant secretary for health technology in Health and Human Services -- this particular Onion article is about US healthcare options. Including this improves Wikipedia.Shelfpea (talk) 13:41, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
• I support REMOVAL. Shelfpea obviously votes for restoration/inclusion since he is the one who added this content after a previous discussion among editors years ago determined that is should NOT be included. A clear consensus was reached during the 2012-2013 discussions as mention of it was removed until Shelfpea added it again 4 years later. The "well-sourced" information all derived from one article that was repeated for sensational effect. Verification fails as there was no source that was able to determine whether Fleming was the one who actually posted the link."Context" also fails. Media literacy has nothing to do with this. Fleming was fully vetted by HHS in order to be appointed. Like all appointees his entire career and life were examined. Wikipedia does not have the responsibility to vet appointees to the executive branch of government.Tomuchtalk (talk) 14:01, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
• What is truly odd here is that Congressman Fleming was a major leader for years in the House of Representatives on the issues surrounding abortion. Yet, no editor has been interested in improving the article with that information. WP:BLP says that this is an encyclopedia of facts not seeking sensationalism or tabloid "news." How will people know Fleming as a figure in the future when important information is absent but trivia is added? Additionally, no media ever verified that Fleming, himself, actually posted the link. Media reports indicate that the posting was quickly deleted once the error was discovered.Tomuchtalk (talk) 14:01, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps you misunderstand the issue behind this RfC. The issue at hand is not any attempt to "vet" Fleming, but whether to include a specific item in the article. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 17:13, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Not at all. I am responding to Shelfpea's suggestion (please read his comments above) that Fleming's new position at HHS in IT requires this inclusion, hinting that Fleming lacks competence (literacy in his words) in media. That sounds a lot like a vetting function for Wikipedia which does not exist.Tomuchtalk (talk) 17:46, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Tomuchtalk, Wikipedia does not fulfill a function like that, nor will this content make it so. It's unfortunately a fact that social media usage has become a big deal, and it's an even bigger deal since November--that should not be a secret. And this specific item, as SBHB puts it, is well-verified. Thank you, Drmies (talk) 01:13, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Nothing happened in November that is relevant to our discussion going back to 2012. Of course Wikipedia is not designed for the purpose of vetting, but Shelfpea argues in effect that it does. Tomuchtalk (talk) 18:57, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

• I vote to Remove or Exclude the passage on The Onion. Let's keep Wikipedia strong and stay away from tabloid nonsense! Joapedia (talk) 18:11, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

— Joapedia (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

Closing administrator should disregard this comment, from a user who dating back to 2013 has only edited this article and its talk page. This is a textbook example of a single-purpose account, plain as day. Neutrality^talk 23:39, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Joapedia, I don't know where you were while Neutrality and I were doing the work of trying to "keep Wikipedia strong" but you seemed to have missed the obvious point that the sources that report on this are not tabloids (duh) and this the content is not "tabloid nonsense". I look forward to your future efforts to keep Wikipedia strong. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 01:10, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

• Among those who are responding to this WP:RfC, who believes the Onion "incident" should be included when there is no Verification that Fleming personally posted the link? And if you do think so, please explain why.To do so violates WP:VER or WP:NOR, or both. Tomuchtalk (talk) 19:41, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
  • Tomuchtalk, I don't know what you mean with the alphabet soup. "Personally posted the link"--it was his Facebook account. The buck has to stop somewhere. Drmies (talk) 02:34, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
    • Drmies, that question reveals your lack of understanding of the process. The post was on Congressman Fleming's OFFICIAL Congressional account, not his personal FB account. One or more staffers typically also post on the social media for members of Congress. Therefore, there is no way to know who actually posted the article link (or removed it). Therefore there is only verification as to what happened, not who did it. You can only say that it happened on Fleming's official FB account, not that Fleming posted and/or removed, himself. It only makes sense to add it to a list of trivial events in an article on social media, not a part of Fleming's work in Congress. Tomuchtalk (talk) 18:52, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
• Support restoration/include content in the modest, status quo form: three well-sourced, properly worded sentences in the body of the article are appropriate for this text. References to "tabloids" are at odds with the facts and should be discounted by the RfC closer: the citations are to, among other publications, Politico and The Atlantic, which are not "tabloids." The same story was referenced in the Washington Post and Time Magazine. Neutrality^talk 23:37, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
  • Even established media outlets enjoy amusing trivial events with a tabloid effect. That doesn't change the undue weight placing it into an encyclopedia, unless Wikipedia needs an article on trivial events involving politicians. Again, no media outlet ever established that Fleming personally created the post. For those reasons and more, it doesn't belong.Tomuchtalk (talk) 00:03, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
    • No, merely repeating over and over that something is "undue weight" doesn't make it so. It's not a magical incantation. Three sentences, in the body of the article, in the context of a lengthy article, about an episode that got notable attention is perfectly appropriate weight. That it was recalled three years later in a Washington Post piece bolsters the point. Whether he "personally created the post" is irrelevant, because this was obviously reported on, in the sources, in connection with him. Additionally, you don't need to respond to everybody else's comment. Neutrality^talk 01:54, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
• Also, RfC is malformed. This RfC question is not in keeping with the plain requirement that RfC questions should be neutral and brief. The question posed by the RfC should be plain ("Should the following content be included or excluded?") and should not containing leading argumentation like this RfC does. This is basic stuff. Neutrality^talk 02:07, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
• Support removal My position hasn't changed since the last time this came up. This was a Facebook post that gained some media traction, but is hardly a major event in the life of John Fleming. By all means, include it the article about The Onion, but it is given too much weight in this article. AniMate 21:38, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
• Include only in context - I was called her by the bot. This incident is widely reported (such as in this book), and certainly writeups in reliable independent sources makes it notable. However, it shouldn't have its own section, and should instead be combined in a section with information about Fleming's other abortion-related activities, such as this one, this one, this one, this one or this one; otherwise it is not balanced coverage. (These aren't necessarily the best examples, just what I found in a few minutes.) The argument that it may have been a member of his staff who posted it doesn't hold water; an elected official is responsible for vetting communications from his/her office.—Anne Delong (talk) 14:35, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
• Remove. Anne Delong is right. If you want to improve this article on the relevant subject matter, a complete and balanced discussion should be included. Is the Onion "incident" the only thing that has been published in the media about Fleming and abortion? What have been his positions? votes? bills sponsored? Or, is this an effort to smear in a BLP? I think the latter. Reading comments here clearly reflect that Fleming's new appointment to HHS has triggered the effort to include this nonsense when it was excluded years ago. And, while "widely written" in the media is an important prerequisite, it is not the only factor for inclusion. The inclusion in the article should also bear some importance on the subject of abortion or Fleming's tenure as a congressman. Here are important quotes from Wikipedia on this type of issue involving a biography of a living person WP:BLP. "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid: it is not Wikipedia's job to be sensationalist, or to be the primary vehicle for the spread of titillating claims about people's lives." And, "the burden of evidence rests with the editor who adds or restores material." Editors who want to include this should be complete on this subject relative to the congressman's years of service, otherwise it should be excluded. Vulcanatta (talk) 16:32, 15 April 2017 (UTC) — Vulcanatta (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

  Shock Brigade Harvester Boris, WP policy is that existing editors should assume good faith from new editors. Vulcanatta (talk) 03:51, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

• Whoever wants to add this to the article doesn't really give a toot about the quality of the article or advancing Wikipedia. That's quite a severe accusation of bad faith. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 16:48, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

• I have rephrased that statement to comply with "good faith" policy. WP:BLP on burden remains. Vulcanatta (talk) 17:51, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

• Remove - Summoned by bot. Inclusion is WP:UNDUE. Adding the content is just an attempt to shine unnecessary negative light on the subject. Meatsgains (talk) 03:12, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
• Support restoration/include: There are plenty of reliable sources to report this. The politician is notable for being a politician, and reliably sourced statements about his political views and actions are relevant by default, including this one. I don't buy the WP:UNDUE claim for a sentence or two -- a full section or sub-section might be too much, but a two sentence sub-sub-subsection seems like the exact amount of weight to put on this. Editors who want to see more content on other statements or actions he has taken should please add it. This RfC isn't about that and the presence of that statement doesn't prevent you from adding more content. And WP:UNDUE is more about reporting minority viewpoints and beliefs, rather than verified events. The classic examples given in WP:UNDUE of statements that should be entirely removed from articles include beliefs that the earth is flat in the article about the Earth or that the Apollo moon landings were a hoax in the article about the Apollo moon landings. This doesn't come anywhere close to that. On the WP:BLP claim: Is it an unflattering gaffe? Sure, but making unflattering gaffes comes with the territory of being a politician. I interpret the tabloid/sensationalist part of WP:BLP to be about "people's lives" rather than their actions in a professional context, especially for people who have put themselves in the public view. Wikipedia is not censored, after all, and we report political gaffes from across the political spectrum. Wikipedia isn't the primary vehicle for spreading these claims, reliable mass media sources were, and Wikipedia is based reporting those sources. And if there are reliable sources that discuss whether it was the politician or his staff (or raise the issue), then report that as well, but we get into original research territory if we start doing trying to read more into what the sources state. Report what the reliable sources state. - Staeiou (talk) 14:55, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Staeiou says, "the politician is notable for being a politician, and reliably sourced statements about his political views and actions are relevant by default, including this one." It appears you agree with Anne Delong---if you are going to post information on the politician's views, by virtue of NPOV, you should reflect both minority and majority views (of the politician's positions). Actually, there is nothing at all posted by editors under the title of "abortion" or any other place in the article that reflect the politician's views or activities on the subject, at all. Tomuchtalk (talk) 22:31, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Tomuchtalk, Wikipedia content policies and guidelines like NPOV are principles and best practices that help the community come to a consensus about how to make articles better. They are not laws to judge whether particular editors did the right thing at a particular time (see WP:POLICY, WP:PRINCIPLE, WP:WINNING, and WP:PPP -- conduct policies like WP:CIVIL or WP:BATTLEGROUND are different). UNDUE does not state that for every unflattering statement an editor adds, they must add some number of flattering or neutral statements, or else their edits should be reverted. UNDUE tells us that the ideal state of this article would certainly include both the Onion incident and other verified statements from reliable sources documenting his position on abortion. So this RfC should be about answering the question: what gets us closer to that ideal state? Removing the Onion incident or keeping it? I just don't see an UNDUE justification for entirely removing verifiable, reliably sourced content, especially when I'm sure that there are sources out there which could give that section more balance. Now, if some of the editors were arguing that the article should only include the Onion incident and no other statements about his position on abortion, I wouldn't support them, because that would be a clear UNDUE issue. But that's not what is happening here. I don't know much about this particular politician (I stumbled into here from WP:RFC/A, which I visit from time to time), but I think you and some of the other editors in this discussion who are particularly interested in this article could improve the article further if you added more reliably sourced descriptive content -- content that isn't promotional and doesn't lead into an UNDUE issue in the other direction, for example, by having three paragraphs about his position on abortion and two sentences on the Onion incident. -Staeiou (talk) 15:42, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

* Support restoration/include content. The coverage is brief, does not claim that Fleming's staff wrote the Onion piece, and is fully cited. The Atlantic is the most reliable of the sources cited, IMHO. Politico is fine too; I would eliminate the one from the New York Daily News. (Do we need three citations in addition to the The Onion article?)

Even TIME covered the story. http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/02/07/louisiana-congressman-mistakes-the-onions-planned-parenthood-story-for-factual-news/ As did CBS News http://www.cbsnews.com/news/republican-congressman-falls-victim-to-old-onion-article/ And several books did too (found with Google Books search) Peter K Burian (talk) 13:36, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Remove · This is not relevant and the source you cite @Shelfpea ("A Conservative Walks into a Bar") has a prejudicial title. It seems the only real effort here is to smear a conservative politician; this appears more in the vein of a tabloid. If this material were to appear anywhere it should be in its own article as an example among many of notable figures who have mistaken The Onion for real news sources or in an article about fake news. Dr. ratdog (talk) 02:50, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

— Dr. ratdog (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. Neutrality^talk 00:58, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

The closing administrator should disregard this user's comment; the user has made no edits other than this vote. Neutrality^talk 00:58, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

My understanding is the new editors are not to be attacked or insulted for the edits they first perform (Wikipedia:No personal attacks; Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers). I have made several edits in the past but I have apparently not been signed in as I am still learning the system at Wikipedia. I assure you this is not a single-purpose account. Dr. ratdog (talk) 14:04, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

• Remove, This does not seem notable at all. It looks like trivial nonsense that had no long lasting effect. It does not seem like a notable part of Fleming's life or career. Truthsort (talk) 23:24, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Remove. This is indeed trivial. There is no point in its inclusion other than to smear Fleming. Panopticonius (talk) 04:01, 10 May 2017 (UTC) — Panopticonius (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

• I vote REMOVE. This trivial "incident" happened five years ago and it is inserted now? Unfairnessdoctrine (talk) 22:11, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Valuable information missing

I have added a number of citations and information relative to Fleming's career both in Congress and HHS, all easily accessible on the internet. Not a single bill that he authored and was signed into law was listed, nor many other achievements and bills he was involved in have been added to the article. Comparing it to other members and former members of Congress, there is a lot that is missing in terms of what he has been doing and what he worked towards. There was virtually nothing about his service in HHS thus far. Also, there were important things about his personal life, such as his church work that was present but later deleted. Unfairnessdoctrine (talk) 02:51, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Valuable information missing

I have added a number of citations and information relative to Fleming's career both in Congress and HHS, all easily accessible on the internet. Not a single bill that he authored and was signed into law was listed, nor many other achievements and bills he was involved in have been added to the article. Comparing it to other members and former members of Congress, there is a lot that is missing in terms of what he has been doing and what he worked towards. There was virtually nothing about his service in HHS thus far. Also, there were important things about his personal life, such as his church work that was present but later deleted. Unfairnessdoctrine (talk) 02:51, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

An unregistered user has made a number of alterations to the article that has left damage including leaving an error message in the body of the article. I have asked him to discuss his alterations on "Talk" but he has refused to do so thus far. Unfairnessdoctrine (talk) 21:35, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

The same unregistered user (72.146.13.109) vandalised a long overdue archive of the Talk section. It has been restored. I have requested that 72.146.13.109 come to Talk to discuss any disagreements. So far he refuses. Unfairnessdoctrine (talk) 10:49, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

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