Talk:Rainbow Honor Walk

RfC on Board Members Descriptors

The consensus is to remove the descriptors about the board members. Two editors support retaining names of the board members in the article while two editors support removing the names. There is no consensus to retain or remove the names, which were moved to a footnote during the RfC.

Cunard (talk) 01:18, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

The following discussion 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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{{rfc|soc|media|hist|rfcid=C93B544}} Which option better serves the reader to understand who is administrating the Rainbow Honor Walk? A, B, or something else? Gleeanon409 (talk) 00:15, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Option A:

As of August 2019, the project's board of directors includes: Peter Goss, Madeline Hancock, Karen Helmuth, Ben Leong, Bill Lipsky, Charlotte Ruffner, board president and founder David Perry, Joseph D. Robinson, Donna Sachet, Gustavo Serina, Barbara Tannenbaum, and Tarita Thomas.

References

Option B:

As of August 2019 the project's Board If Directors includes: Peter Goss, a local realtor, and businessperson with experience in the travel industry; Madeline Hancock, a learning specialist; Karen Helmuth, a clinical psychologist; Ben Leong, a venture capitalist consultant, and social activist with LGBTQ Asian Pacific Islanders; Bill Lipsky, author, and university professor, with the GLBTQ Historical Society; Charlotte Ruffner, lawyer, and social activist; board president and founder David Perry, who runs his own media relations firm; Joseph D. Robinson, a HIV/AIDS, and cancer researcher; Donna Sachet, LGBTQ community activist, author, and performer; Gustavo Serina, community advocate with the Castro Benefit District; journalist and author Barbara Tannenbaum; and Tarita Thomas, a human resources consultant, and diversity and inclusion specialist.

References

Comments

• Option B is preferable to me. It gives a basic context as to these people have been entrusted to choose who represents LGBTQ history. A few words about each person is much more meaningful to a near-anonymous name. Gleeanon409 (talk) 00:24, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
• Gleeanon409, I understand it can be frustrating to have content you added removed, but there are a few reasons why these extra details are not necessary. For starters, per WP:UNDUE, it provides extra detail unrelated to the RHW. Overall, per WP:NPOV as a whole, it presents a promotional-sounding voice in the article which takes away from the credibility of the encyclopedic entry. Similarly, as seen in WP:COAT, it's generally better to not begin writing about something that doesn't enhance the understanding of the topic itself. While many editors may object to even having a list of board members at all, I don't completely think it's worth deleting; however, going into what else those board members do doesn't help discuss the RHW specifically. – Broccoli & Coffee ^{(Oh hai)} 04:47, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Actually these few details are explaining why these people are qualified to be creating this historical RHW monument. That they are activists, or professionals in LGBTQ facets of LGBTQ culture helps qualify why they are considered experts to help determine who represents LGBTQ history. Gleeanon409 (talk) 08:51, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
• (Summoned by bot) Leaning towards an option C, personally--remove the names of these non-notable persons. Frankly, I'm not seeing the WP:WEIGHT value here for listing out these names. It's worth noting as a weak tea WP:BLP concern that people are encouraged to join nonprofit boards for all manner of reasons (including sometimes just their connections to deep pockets) and they may not all necessarily qualify as public persons for the purposes of our policies, at least insofar as those who are not notable enough for their own article. This concern is ameliorated somewhat by the fact that our WP:PRIMARY source for the board members is the org website itself. Also, this is what nonprofit administrators would call a more "professional" board, meaning that members all seem to have previous professional experience in a field relevant to the organization's overt purpose and/or experience in practical fields of administration or law. Nevertheless, concrete information on details regarding whether the org is a registered 501(c)(3) organization, incorporated in the state, would tell us a lot more about the nature of governance and administration of the organization than a list of names of non-notable persons, with or without their professions.

More generally, I agree with Broccoli and Coffee on this one, that including these names, particularly with extraneous detail, tends to feel more like boosterism than an encyclopedic focus on the core topic of the article. I applaud these fine people for their involvement in such a worthy project, but I don't see what context for better understanding the honor walk itself is provided by including these names. Anyone wishing to know those details can always visit their website to find out, but we're more concerned with a summary of the main topic here than such details. (Those details might also be a matter of public record, depending on the org's incorporation status in California and it's tax-exempt status with the U.S. federal government). Anyway, I just don't see the preliminary WP:ONUS argument here for the inclusion, as a weight matter. Snow ^{let's rap} 06:32, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

• • I think likely all of them are notable enough for their own articles but creating those will have to fall on someone else’s shoulders.
  • The point is not to booster volunteerism but to explain who is making these historical decisions and perhaps why they are deemed worthy enough.
  • The only reasoning behind the present sourcing as that it shows why the RHW felt they were qualified. None of their involvement, as far as I can tell, is questionable or controversial in any way. But non-primary sources exist as well. I was choosing to spend energy on more critical areas of the article. Gleeanon409 (talk) 08:51, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
• Option C, as is standard practice everywhere in Wikipedia. Our policy of NOT ADVOCACY, and the coresponding guidelines and pracices about promotionalism , apply even to the best of causes, even to our favorite causes, even to the things we think are hte most important to advocate. We all favor nPOV--but NPOV does not mean to refrain from promoting those things one doesn't want to promote. Furthermore, the names on a board of directors is like any other raw data--it doesn't mean anything unless it's properly interpreted. Not everyone on a board is on the board because they think the organization is absolutely central to promoting their personal

agenda; people join to show general goodwill, or even for social reasons. To some degree, board membership characterises the person, and can be encyclopedic content, because people don't usually remain on boards of organizations they bitterly disagree with--but even here, they may join because they feel that for some reason reason they don't have a choice. As usual, there are exceptions: there are some very famous organizations where the names of the people on the board can be relevant content, because people want all information about the group-see WP:EINSTEIN. In this context, an example might be the ACLU or NAACP. And it can be relevant if there is someone on the board whom one would not expect, and leads one to think the organization's ostensible purpose may not represent it's true intentions. Here, none of this is the case--the mere fact of wanting to include the capsule descriptions implies the purpose is promotional . DGG ( talk ) 06:37, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

I’ve taken the advice and moved the list into a footnote. Gleeanon409 (talk) 17:37, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

@Gleeanon409:, from your comment above, I take it that the Rfc no longer requires attention, comments or votes at this time, is that correct? As long as the Rfc header is still there, legobot may continue to send invitations to come here. If you are done with this Rfc, as nominator you have the right to withdraw it; that will stop further invitations. To do that, remove, comment out, or embed the Rfc header ({{rfc|soc|media|hist|rfcid=C93B544}}) in <nowiki>...</nowiki> tags. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 23:32, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

 Done, Thank you! Gleeanon409 (talk) 00:01, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

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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.

Other editing - repetition of sexuality terms/ lack of info about board and jury/needs better sources

1.) Since the majority of honorees are gay or lesbian, is it really necessary to repeat gay or lesbian for each entry? What about only adding qualifiers for those who do not qualify under one of these terms, such as transgender? The repetition makes for tedious reading.

2) There is a proposal (above) to add considerable information about board members, none of whom has a Wikipedia articles. But there is a lack of basic information about the function and operations of the board: How were/are they selected? What terms do they serve? Who is founder David Perry and why should we care? Too much content in this article is cited to his firm's website - a PR firm or what?

3) How many people were on the jury that determined the finalists for the design competition for the plaque? How many from each group referenced (cultural groups and LGBTQ leaders? Were they official organizational reps or staff persons representing a group? Was it clear from the beginning that the jury would select four finalists to recommend to the board? Was there a constraint in the design competition on the cost of materials/production for each plaque?

4) Too much content is cited to David Perry's firm's website. If the Rainbow Walk has not been covered by more secondary sources (and better ones than Quirky Travel Guy, or an article in the SFE devoted to typos in the plaques), it does not seem notable enough to have an article in Wikipedia. Parkwells (talk) 20:56, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

1.) Although it can be a tad tedious—it’s one word—LGBTQ people and cultures have been historically erased and minimized. I think it’s important that each thumbnail bio is clear, and does so immediately, for those who never get to the second sentence.

2.) David Perry is a p.r. specialist and has considerable ties if his client list is any indication. He was just named to the SF Chamber of Commerce I seem to recall one of the articles about him stated. As I’m able to replace press release info with secondary sources I’ll look to doing just that. I was going in chronological order so only got in a few years before I had to deal with the Board issue.
There are plenty of sources but it does take time.
Also the “Under Construction” tag was removed against my wishes.
The “considerable” information proposed in the above section is all of a few words about each board member which I think gets to the heart of your concerns. Who are these people? That’s why I included it in the first place.

3.) Great questions! I wonder myself but haven’t seen those answers go by quite yet.

4.) There are plenty of secondary sources, and besides the typo issue in 2014–which will be added to the history—I haven’t seen anything controversial that suggests corruption or mismanagement which would balloon press coverage. I was in process of building the article when I had to pivot to other issues. Gleeanon409 (talk) 21:39, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Alan Turing never used the phrase "artificial intelligence", he used "machine intelligence"

The phrase "artificial intelligence" was coined by John McCarthy in 1956 at the Dartmouth meeting. Turing specifically used "machine intelligence", and his meaning of the word "intelligence" did come from his work in "military intelligence" from GCCS.

I was also on the Turing Centennial committee, and I know the referenced work, but I this use of artificial in the context of Turing, not to sound too pedantic.

24.121.144.200 (talk) 23:16, 26 November 2023 (UTC)