Talk:2011 Wisconsin protests/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Communism Vandalism

I'm pretty sure it's vandalism that there are so many places where "Democrat" has been replaced with "Communist" 128.187.0.183 (talk) 18:15, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Specifically, under Wisconsin 14 128.187.0.183 (talk) 18:18, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Request for Clarification on Bill-passing process

Could some section be added or inserted on the required process for this bill to actually pass? I'm a non-US citizen and found it particularly confusing to understand what the current status of the bill is, particularly where it says both that the bill was passed, but yet cannot be voted on due to lack of quorum/Democrats, and that one senator said he wouldn't vote for it 2 days after it (already?) passed. I'm guessing this means two different state houses need to pass it for it to become law, but this isn't explained anywhere. If someone who knows a bit about this could add a few details to the Background, it would be really helpful for those not familiar with the US state-level political system!

Also, the 'Criticism' section refers to commentary on the Democrats going to Illinois before this event has been mentioned anywhere in the article, so it doesn't make any sense unless you already know what happened...

Thanks. 144.32.48.132 (talk) 11:17, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I am also confused: I am not american but it is now international news and I looked up wikipedia. The article should be written with international audience in mind. For example, don't assume much familiarity with the american system. A timeline would be helpful. 59.93.89.254 (talk) 10:22, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Biased list of reactions

A couple things about the list of reactions:

• Is Ed Schultz's opinion noteworthy?
• Why is there only one dissenting opinion of the protests, compared to five opinions that support the protesters? Seems a bit biased.

Jzxpertguitarist (talk) 19:51, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I think there have been more pro-protest reactions than anti-protest reactions overall, but I fully agree that to keep the article balanced it would be wise to represent all points of view. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gavin6942 (talk • contribs) 01:55, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Then remove the section entirely until there is a balance of viewpoints. Otherwise it appears the article is pushing a one-sided agenda. Aa7ya (talk) 09:22, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree. I moved Ed Shultz and Jesse Jackson from the "Reaction" section to the "Protests" section, since they were participating in the protests rather than simply responding to them. It's a start. –CWenger (talk) 19:57, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Does the article need a list of reactions? Isn't it better to thread relevant reactions into the content? Midlakewinter (talk) 20:19, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Just as a general clarification, there is no absolute need to have an equal number of reactions for each viewpoint. On wiki, we reflect viewpoints with due weight. If the majority of reactants favor a given side, we do not necessarily give equal time to the opposing side. It is balanced based on the weight of the actual opinion, not on a 50 50 split between viewpoints.Jbower47 (talk) 21:51, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Please use full Citation templates

If you aren't sure how, here is some Manual of Style info on Wikipedia:Citation_templates. Otherwise, it is just more clean-up work for others later on. Thanks. Midlakewinter (talk) 20:22, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Restructure

i've done a restructure and extension that changes most parts of the article at least a little. Sorry if i've accidentally dropped something that someone still feels is notable. Boud (talk) 22:43, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

To people in the US, it may sound unnecessary to say that Wisconsin is in the United States, to link to the Capitol building to explain what it is, or to give few words of the lead of the National Guard article to briefly give the reader an idea of what it is. But this is an encyclopedia about the world, so these sorts of info are not obvious to all readers from around the world. Boud (talk) 22:55, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

"Misspellings": 'legislation' was misspelt, but both wiktionary:protestor and wiktionary:protester are correct spellings, and the other changes were US vs UK/Aus spelling. Since this is a US topic, it makes sense to use US spelling. But that doesn't make UK/Aus spellings "misspellings". :) Boud (talk) 00:20, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

removal of spread to Ohio

In this edit: [1] someone removed the references to the spread of the protest to Ohio, another state in the United States. In Google news i get about 1700 hits on wisconsin ohio protests. It seems reasonably uncontroversial to me that these protests have spread from Wisconsin to Ohio. Just because the article originally was focussed on the Wisconsin protests doesn't seem to me to be a valid reason to restrict the topic artificially. The Ohio protests are probably not (yet) notable enough to constitute a separate article, but their spread seems to be WP:RS'ed.

So i don't understand why the spread to Ohio was removed. Boud (talk) 23:33, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

About 21 hours and 30 or so edits later, nobody seems to know why the spread-to-Ohio was removed, so i'm restoring it. i suggest discussion take place here in this section. So far the amount of content on spread-to-Ohio is much less than other parts, so it's not clear if it should go to the lead or not. Boud (talk) 19:40, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Why the mention of the oath of office in the Wisconsin 14 section?

I mean, obviously, I'm not naiive. I expect the reason that the oath of office is mentioned in this section is to imply that the Wisconsin 14 are failing to "faithfully to discharge the duties of their respective offices" by deliberately preventing quorum to be reached. However, we shouldn't be implying such things without some sort of source to back it up. Is there any reliable source out there to suggest this is relevant? 204.50.199.4 (talk) 23:19, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Confusion

The article says "Democrats strongly oppose the bill, but because there are no Democratic Senators to defend their position, the bill is expected to pass the Senate easily.[36]" But how can the bill pass if there isn't a quorum? Or is the quorum different here? Please clarify. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.111.130.159 (talk) 00:26, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

I believe that as a non-spending bill - it doesn't require quorum. The source is correct, but does a shitty job explaining the situation. Midlakewinter (talk) 00:43, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

That's correct; spending bills require a larger quorum than non-spending bills. --Orange Mike | Talk 02:33, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

The bill actually does have a fiscal provision to avoid being construed as a poll tax, which thwarted passage. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.90.29.154 (talk) 01:12, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Per news (example CSMonitor), add Political activities of the Koch family?

Why did Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker take a call from 'David Koch'? : Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker thought he was having a friendly chat with David Koch, a billionaire industrialist and major funder of conservative causes. It turned out to be a liberal prankster. 99.181.132.155 (talk) 23:33, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

No. Someone falsely impersonating Koch does not imply that this is the result of Koch political activities. Arzel (talk) 00:11, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Exactly. Just read this [2]. Nice try smearing the Governor though. Jzxpertguitarist (talk) 00:13, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Presumptuous language for someone posting The American Spectator Blog (spectator.org/blog) ... 99.109.126.56 (talk) 01:59, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Opinion pieces are not news. Aa7ya (talk) 12:31, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Impersonation of a living person call

I have removed specifics about the call from the section. Given the nature of the call, impersinating a real person, and trying to bait Walker into making statements puts Walkers responses into question. By including only Walker's words without including the entire exchange between Walker and Murphy the presentation of Walker's comments are out of context. What Murphy did may not even have been legal (impersinating a living person). To quote or summarize Walker under this situation is likely a BLP violation. Arzel (talk) 14:32, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Quite honestly, I do not think it should be mentioned at all. At this point it just seems trivial. Truthsort (talk) 16:38, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

The main reason I added this was that I considered this event to be synonymous to the 2009 ACORN video controversy. The nature of the events were somewhat similar, but there the videos were heavily edited and taken out of context, whereas here the entire recording has been posted and the governor's office confirmed its veracity. Hence I think that a good point could be made for including the specifics. It is very true that on the contrary it has not been reported very much by national sources, but at the same time, it has received sizeable attention in Wisconsin. But I'm not a very prolific Wiki editor, so I'm not too familiar with what the usual requirements are for this.Seleucus (talk) 19:02, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

By 'this' I meant the summary of events in the call. It might also be worth noting that the call had pretty major practical consequences in that Governor Walker asked the 14 Senate Democrats to return to the capital to negotiate a compromise, but they refused after learning that in the call Walker had discussed using that as a means to obtain a quorum through loophole. Seleucus (talk) 19:09, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Again, I do not see how this has significance to the protest. Unless there is ever any legal action to back these claims that what he did was "unethical", the content of this is just trivial news coverage. Truthsort (talk) 17:21, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Military conflict template

C'mon guys. Is a military conflict template necessary at the beginning at the article. This isn't a war. It's a protest. It seems very biased. So unless someone has a really good reason for keeping it, I'm removing it. Jzxpertguitarist (talk) 20:36, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Alright I decided to replace the "military conflict" template with an "uprising" template. Seems more reasonable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jzxpertguitarist (talk • contribs) 20:49, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

I've got to agree that the military conflict template is completely inappropriate. Also inappropriate is the use of the Wisconsin state flag to represent Gov. Walker and the Republican Party and the red flag to represent the Democratic Party and the unions; that imagery suggests that the Governor's policy represents the people of Wisconsin and that the Democrats and unions are Communist. (Red clothing ≠ red flags.) Even if the template, or one like it, remains, those flags have to go. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 22:43, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Use of the war template is completely inappropriate. S51438 (talk) 22:45, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Another user restored the infobox with the edit summary "Restored infobox. Btw, a better infobox could be found. Perhaps there's a protest/uprising/demonstration/march/revolt/disagreement/civil-dispute infobox?" As far as I can tell from looking at pages like Montgomery Bus Boycott, Salt Satyagraha, Columbia University protests of 1968 and so forth, no such infobox exists. Unless someone can make a good argument for why the military conflict template (or "uprising", which is actually a "revolution" template) should be used in this article, it should stay out. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 23:44, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Keep, until another is found. Agreed that a military infobox is not well suited for a protest over a union dispute. There is value in having an infobox as it lets readers quickly gain insight into the topic of the article without fully reading the article. A new one should be found, but until then, keep one that is imperfect, as none is worse than imperfect. ~ Justin Ormont (talk) 00:03, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I purpose finding a better infobox, for instance, a protest/uprising/demonstration/march/revolt/disagreement/civil-dispute infobox may exist. Within that infobox, I purpose that it contain: a title, a photo, a very short description of the dispute, location, the name of primary leaders of both sides, the supporters of the two sides including popular support (including polls, etc), related articles (should they exist). ~ Justin Ormont (talk)

Well, as I said above, I can't find an infobox for labor protests and the like. {{infobox uprising}}, which was briefly used in the article before being reverted, seems to me marginally better than {{infobox military conflict}}, but if you look at where it's used, it seems like a slight stretch to equate these protests (on the state level) with the various national uprisings and revolutions which use this template. But the military conflict infobox, with its categories for "belligerents" and strength of forces, etc., is actively misleading to the reader, and should by no means be restored. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 00:21, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I created a new info box for civil disputes. Feel free to edit the infobox directly. ~ Justin Ormont (talk) 13:40, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Rasmussen is biased (According to a blog?)

If Wikipedians are not allowed to use blogs as sources, why should they be used to somehow make a distinction between facts and speculation? — Preceding unsigned comment added by S51438 (talk • contribs) 23:26, 27 February 2011

It is a common misconception that no blogs are considered reliable sources on Wikipedia. Actually, WP:NEWSBLOG (part of WP:V) says that blogs published by newspapers and subject to their editorial control are acceptable as sources, so if Nate Silver's New York Times blog said something directly about the Wisconsin protests, that could be used as a source for this article. However, Silver's criticism of Rasmussen does not in and of itself determine whether polls from Rasmussen Reports should be considered reliable. That's a different question, and one which should be discussed here. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 23:32, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Hmm it seems Silver has criticized Rasmussen before, more reason to believe he is acting out of opinion, not facts. Taken from the article Rasmussen Reports; In 2008, FiveThirtyEight.com blogger Nate Silver wrote that Rasmussen’s Presidential tracking poll “would probably be the one I'd want with me on a desert island." He is obviously opinionated and should not be considered "reliable". As for if I think Rasmussen is reliable, I believe so. If Rasmussen is not reliable, neither is Public Policy Polling which has been accused of having a liberal bias. — Preceding unsigned comment added by S51438 (talk • contribs) 23:40, 27 February 2011

Silver has indeed criticized Rasmussen before, using extensive mathematical models to support his criticisms. Personally, I think the best solution is to include all the polls, along with a brief note (with citation) indicating that their methodology has been questioned by polling commentator Nate Silver. We may or may not also note that similar criticisms have been leveled at this particular poll by Mark Blumenthal of the Huffington Post (formerly of pollster.com, before Huffington bought them out): [3] —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 23:51, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

(Incidentally, what's the source for conservative criticism of PPP? Our article on them cites praise from The Wall Street Journal, which isn't exactly a liberal organ. If reliable sources from the conservative side of things have criticized PPP, that should probably be mentioned at Public Policy Polling; if not, then it's just standard partisan sniping, which doesn't reach the encyclopedic standards we should all be working towards.) —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 00:01, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Overall, PPP has been very accurate in their polls. I would say that conservative criticism comes mostly from the other questions they ask: e.g. "Do you believe Pres. Obama was born in the U.S.?" "Do you believe Obama is the Antichrist?" (I pick those two as the ones that would likely be most criticized.) But it is worth noting that firstly, most of their questions are submitted by followers (and for whatever reason, there are more sane liberal comments than conservative ones on their blog), and secondly, it is true that a surprisingly large number of Republicans believe those to be the case (though whether to the extent reported in their polls is open to question), and the others are ashamed to note that. But I am not aware of any sane criticism of PPP's accuracy/bias after-the-fact (though plenty of people upset about their results before the elections, on either side); they've been very good throughout. Seleucus (talk) 01:59, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Nate Silver is not the arbitor of whether a poll is reliable. In general I think we should leave the public opinion polls out completely. Polling data is easily manipulated to present a certain perspective, plus it is highly degenerative. Public opinion changes all the time and provides little insight to the current view. Arzel (talk) 02:35, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree that Nate Silver's view of a poll's reliability is not the be-all and end-all; however, I do think that a) public opinion polling is an important and relevant aspect of any political event, and b) if polls exist on a subject, it's important, and encylopedically relevant, to present a balanced portrait of that polling. Presenting both the polling data and any critiques of said polls from reliable sources (and Silver's NYT blog is a reliable source) seems to me an appropriate and neutral course. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 03:13, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Regardless, you are not going to be able to use Silver's criticism of a previous poll to critique a current poll, that would be WP:SYNTH. Arzel (talk) 06:09, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

• This assessment by Silver is generic: that Rasmussen is a partisan poll. (This is based on several years of data, in which Rasmussen consistently polls about 5% right of the results on Election Day; it is linked here to criticism of Rasmussen's poll design as biased. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:11, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Who says that? Think Progress? :) From what I could tell that story is linked to 538 saying Rasmussen is biased and Silver uses TP as his basis for that analysis. Silver is hardly a neutral player (he hails from The Daily Kos and supported Obama). He has been bashing Rasmussen for some time now. Not that any of this matters, since Silver's beef this time is with the question, for which Silver is not an expert. Arzel (talk) 20:34, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Original Research in the Background section

The background section starts off with a little original research. I removed the section once, only to have it restored. I removed a little bit again, but see that there is still some original research. There are currently two sources being used which occured prior to the start of the protests. These sources are being used to set the stage for the protests. Now, while this may be true, it is in violation of WP:OR. Since these sources are reporting events prior to the start of the protests they cannot be used to set the stage. We must use reliable sources that report after the event started that make this connection. I thought I would open this up here before I remove it again in hopes that we can keep original research out of this article. Arzel (talk) 06:05, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Infobox Contents

The page's infobox could be improved, but I generally don't like unilateral or uninformed changes, so I pose these questions to the wikipedians:

• Is there anyone or any group which should be considered to be leaders or key figures on the side of the protesters? On the opposition side, I would say Governor Walker is the de facto and de iure leader. - Justin Ormont (talk) 03:33, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

• Are there names/titles for the sides of this civil dispute? The protesters, may be an adequate title for that side; is there a good title for other side? - Justin Ormont (talk) 03:33, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

• Should the Wisconsin 14 be included in some way in the infobox? - Justin Ormont (talk) 03:33, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

• The number of the protestors is up to 100k depending on the day. Is there anything we can summarize for the number of the opposing side? Perhaps the number of counter protestors or the number of police forces? The police force doesn't seem like an active participant (for either side) in the protests; they seem neutral from my POV. This is in contrast to various protests around the world where the police forces are actively engaged in either assisting or countering the main protestors. - Justin Ormont (talk) 03:33, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

• Are relevant fields or data missing from the infobox which would be useful to help summarize the conflict? - Justin Ormont (talk) 03:33, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

• May want to verify arrest numbers quoted. According to http://www.cityofmadison.com/incidentreports/incidentDetail.cfm?id=11902 there have been "no physical arrests". The 9 "arrests" could merely be citations. ChristianHerro (talk) 07:14, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

"...no physical arrests made by the Madison Police Department...", is rather specific. There may be other police forces, for instance capital police or even non-Madison police. Also, the news article and police report were on the same day. That said, I agree that more sources of the arrest numbers should be sought. ~ Justin Ormont (talk) 08:33, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Responses section

I was reading through the article, and was pleasantly surprised to find it fairly well balanced. Then I came to the Responses section. :) I think this section should probably be removed altogether, or at least significantly altered. Obama, and people in a position to influence the event are the only one's whose comments or "response" are noteworthy in my opinion. What is said by people on Arab television networks is getting outside the realm of relevance to the topic. We could list the opinion of ten thousand people in that section, because just about everyone in public life has made some statement about it. What makes some of these notable at all? Unless the response has some type of measurable impact on the situation itself, or is in and of itself noteworthy, then I propose removing them. As it exists, the entire section violates WP:CONTROVERSY by not disclosing the bias of the opinion givers, which gives the impression that their opinions are true or valid when it may not be so, and since most the statements listed are no germane to the topic, removal is the best course of action. —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 20:07, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

This section does not violate Wikipedia policy. If the list included people or organizations that are not notable that would be a violation. It is not correct to say that only those that have a "measurable impact on the situation itself" should be included; this is a list of various people's viewpoint of the situation. And I really can not understand your suggestion that we have no way of knowing whether their opinions are biased and that we must somehow present that information so that the reader can know whether they are "true" or not. To some extent all opinions are biased - if that were not true there would be no such thing as opposing viewpoints. Gandydancer (talk) 14:08, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

WP:CONTROVERSY states that when a statement is given on a controversial topic, the position of the source must be given. It gives specific examples, and requires the use of phrases that describe the position or bias of the person giving the statement. It expressly requires the use of phrases like "conservative American churchgroup" "liberal anti-war group", or in this case "pro-union organizers" or "anti-union business leaders", etc. The policy does not say the controversial opinions cannot be included, but that their source must be described. Furthermore, the section does indeed violate WP:UNDUE, by putting the statements of seemingly random people in the article, when those people themselves have nothing to do with the topic other than that they are commenting on it. What makes the statement of a Arab TV journalist important at all, and more important the comments by hundreds of other people in leadership positions directly involved in the situation? The section also violates WP:NPOV by giving 11 pro-Union viewpoints but only 3 anti-union - it stark contrast to the actual percentage of though according the polls cited, which should be more like 5-3. The combination of these two policy violations is a serious problem for the section, which is the reasoning behind WP:MISC(see example #5). I find the rest of the article to be very well wrote and balanced. —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 14:31, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I've tried to clear up the response section a bit by both adding positions and merging the responses of similar groups into one bullet point. Right now, we seem to have 8 pro-union viewpoints and 6 anti-union points (counting the mixed ones as one for each side - both church groups and the comments on Egypt), which seems pretty fair to me. Do you still have any issues with it? It's true that some of the viewpoints give undue weight - the main one I would comment on at this stage is Tom Morello, a musician, but that would make the result pretty even when actual opinions are not (and we would expect disproportionate responses on the pro-union side just from the intensity of its supporters.) Seleucus (talk) 18:49, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Tax revenue levels

I cut the reference to tax revenues remaining high, in contradiction to the published source for the remark about 2003 tax levels. The remark about tax levels had as its citation a lot of what appeared to me as a non-specialist as a confusing and undigested set of relatively raw data. That means verifying the information would require going through tax revenue levels for every year from 2003-2010. That requires a relatively high degree of sophistication. As such, I don't think the claim about tax revenue levels is currently verified by the citation provided and so should not be included. As a non-specialist, going through that data feels to me quite close to original research.

Ellabaker —Preceding undated comment added 00:40, 2 March 2011 (UTC).

Was this already discussed here? If not, you should probably revert the cut and put it up for discussion before unilaterally deleting it. Unilateral edits are fine for obvious errors (typos, grammar, etc), but everything else is best discussed. If no one bites after a while, then I'd feel free to be bold. But it's always best to see what other people think first, they might have an insight you don't.Jbower47 (talk) 21:45, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

You're probably right. I'm still getting the hang of wikipedia. I looked for discussion but didn't see any. If someone does have good arguments for why this should be included that would probably help clarify the point in the article anyway. I looked for clearer explanations or sources that said either way about this issue but didn't find any. As I said, I'm a non-specialist here so I may have missed something, but it seems to me that clarity and verifiability for the non-specialist reader is particularly important for controversial events. Ellabaker 67.220.16.232 (talk) 06:33, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Biased title

It is inaccurate and POV to call this article "Wisconsin budget protests". The protests are not about the budget; they are about collective bargaining rights. As a matter of fact the unions have already agreed to accept the governor's proposed changes in their pension and health care contributions [4], so the budget is an irrelevancy. The protests are entirely about the governor "trying to take away nearly all collective bargaining rights from state workers". Associated Press, March 2, 2011 The limitation of collective bargaining rights is the very first section in the legislation itself [5] and it is what has sparked all the protesting, in Wisconsin and nationwide. Both the article title and the opening paragraph need to be rewritten to reflect what these protests are actually about. --MelanieN (talk) 15:15, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

P.S. A more accurate title might be "Wisconsin union protests" or "Wisconsin public worker protests". --MelanieN (talk) 15:44, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

More evidence that this is about union rights and not about the budget: [6], [7], [8]. --MelanieN (talk) 15:52, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

From four days' observation, at any given point, my guess would be a majority of the people out there are not themselves public workers, but rather other union members and supporters of the public workers. --Orange Mike | Talk 16:35, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

You are probably right, there are only 300,000 public employees in WI. Maybe we could call the article "Budget and Union protests" or "Budget and Collective Bargaining" protests. The title currently denotes the bill being protested, rather than the nature of the protest. I quick check of google news search shows the term "Budget Protest" and "Union Protest" are used almost equally though. —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 16:38, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the title is inaccurate. The "budget repair bill" being protested is separate from the actual budget and the more controversial parts are more directly about public unions than about the budget. "2011 Wisconsin budget and union protests" seems to capture the nature of the event better. --Dodo's Conundrum (talk) 17:35, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I like "2011 Wisconsin public worker protests". While I agree that many of the protesters are not actually public workers, it seems to convey the topic better than "union protests." It seems like a reasonable simplification for a title. VQuakr (talk) 17:39, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

The main of the protests is about the collective bargaining right being stripped from the unions, but there are many people also protesting the $250 million budget cuts at the University of Wisconsin. Today there's pro-recycling protesters picketing the $1.1M budget cuts for recycling. I vote for a title which best encompasses all the protesters, including: Union protesters, anti/pro-budget cut protesters, anti/pro-Walker protesters, UW protesters, counter protesters, etc. The unifying theme to all the protesters is the time and place even if sparked by Governor Walker's proposed budget bill. Vote: All encompassing title, perhaps simply "2011 Wisconsin protests". You will note that the 2011_Saudi_Arabian_protests, 2011_Egyptian_revolution, 2011_Chinese_protests, 2011_Libyan_uprising, 2011_Bahraini_protests, 2011_Iranian_protests, 2011_Jordanian_protests, 2011_Iranian_protests do not specify the reason for the protests in the title, perhaps because there's multiple reasons for each specific protest. ~ Justin Ormont (talk) 20:31, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I suppose that's the best way to encompass it all, though I think the protest over the public workers issues vastly outweighs other items. But that can be made pretty clear in the article. As long as we don't expect a different set of Wisconsin protests in 2011....Jbower47 (talk) 21:42, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I think 2011 Wisconsin protests as suggested by Justin Ormont is a good idea. It is completely neutral without attempting to explain who is protesting or what they are protesting about - on which reasonable observers may differ, and which may in fact evolve as the situation develops. I see the link on the Mainpage has already been changed to simply "Protests in Wisconsin." My !vote is for 2011 Wisconsin protests and I hope someone moves it there soon. Thanks --MelanieN (talk) 03:23, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm going to go ahead and change it - since that seems to be a consensus here, or at least it doesn't seem that anyone has anything more to say in this section. --MelanieN (talk) 15:09, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

"Strike"

In the article's current narrative, until union leaders call for teachers to return to work, the narrative does not discuss strikes at all, "Wildcat" or "Official". Could editors please clarify how these workers on strike are on strike from reliable sources? Thanks, Fifelfoo (talk) 21:26, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I believe it's unclear whether or not these actions constitute a strike. This is partially a matter of litigation that may still be pending. It's my understanding that a strike is when employees cease work to sway the behavior of their employer. The people taking off work in Madison are public employees but their immediate employer is not the governor or legislature but rather subsidiary parts of the state of Wisconsin. I believe the litigation is about whether or not their time away from work counts as an attempt to change the behavior of their immediate employer, in which case it is a strike, or if it is a political protest, in which case it may be large scale unexcused absence but is not quite the same thing as a strike. Since this is still unclear legally to the best of my knowledge the article should not discuss this as a strike and should perhaps lay out the details of the controversy if the issue is going to be included at all. Ellabaker —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.220.16.232 (talk) 06:43, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

"it may be large scale unexcused absence but is not quite the same thing as a strike" not in Industrial Relations, sociological, Marxist, social democratic, anarchist terminology, or most employment law. A strike is the refusal to perform work as ordered by failing to attend work. But the key point is that the article does not make clear that mass absences from work have occurred at all, until it quotes people calling for workers to return to work: yet these mass absences have been remarked upon by reliable sources. Fifelfoo (talk) 06:51, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Jump in page views?

Graph of page views for last 30 days showing large jump in viewers today (March 2nd)
2011_Wisconsin_budget_protests has been viewed 54871 times in the last 30 days. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 1 2 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 255 2.9k 3.1k 4.0k 4.0k 3.3k 2.4k 3.3k 3.8k 3.1k 24.7k 26.5k 21.2k 15.9k 10.6k 5.3k

Anyone know why the page views for this page has jumped from 3-4k people per day to 25k today? There seems to be a 7x jump in the number of people looking at this page today. ~ Justin Ormont (talk) 05:22, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

That's very odd. Actually, my first guess would be a DDoS attack (I don't know what the signature of that would be, but this would make sense); there certainly doesn't seem to be any reason for such a jump and Google Trends shows the topic as decreasing in volume. Especially as the day has just began Seleucus (talk) 06:33, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

StumbleUpon. 98.246.29.211 (talk) 08:30, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I think I found the reason. The protests are listed on wikipedia's main page. Wikipedia's main page currently says: "Protests against budget changes in the U.S. state of Wisconsin enter their third week, with thousands of people demonstrating around the State Capitol." ~ Justin Ormont (talk) 11:10, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Inflammatory language

This sentence: Some Democrats never had any time to vote on this because they were screaming and yelling to try to stop the vote, but it passed. It happened so fast, so suddenly, they were caught off guard.

I do not argue that the source used the phrase. I do not argue that the same source said four Republicans voted against the bill. I argue that a statement that is a direct quote (see source here) should be put in quotation marks. Especially, inflammatory remarks should either be put in quotes or paraphrased into a more neutral tone. 71.234.215.133 (talk) 09:32, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Blocking websites

[9] I have absolutely no knowledge of this event whatsoever (apart from the usual news coverage) but I found this source whilst browsing on the internet and I though that it was interesting. Is it useful?Zlqq2144 (talk) 09:03, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like a non-story to me. –CWenger (talk) 15:59, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Deaths of 4,400,00?

In what appeared to be vandalism the death toll was listed as 4 400 000. This had no reference and was changed back to 0. Blue Halcyon (talk) 03:57, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I think that's an obvious mistake, at least none of us are aware of any deaths during the course of the protests (a dozen or so arrests, but no deaths). –MuZemike 04:32, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Fake Photo

The photo in Egypt is likely photoshopped. It should really be removed unless there's some evidence that it's real. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.188.23.171 (talk) 04:10, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Here's an article about the image. I assume it's real. ~ Justin Ormont (talk) 04:47, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Merge proposal

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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I am closing this discussion; it has run for two weeks and it is clear there is no consensus for a merge. United States public employee protests 2011 has been expanded considerably since this discussion was started, as well, which was a factor in several editors' "Support merge" rationales. VQuakr (talk) 19:05, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
note: this is a combined section from two similar sections on this same talk page ~ Justin Ormont (talk) 01:18, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

On the suggestion to merge United States public employee protests 2011 into this article, Oppose merge. At some point in the future it may become clear that both of these topics can be best dealt with in a single article, but right now the two titles seem to imply adequately different scopes to keep the articles separate. VQuakr (talk) 06:57, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

I also oppose any merge. It seems clear the protests in Madison are notable in their own right. -Helvetica (talk) 05:59, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Please, nobody merge this with the 2011 public employee protests. We still haven't seen the end of all this, and we still don't know for sure whether or not there will be a ripple effect across the entire country. InMooseWeTrust (talk) 19:21, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

If the other article can be cleaned up, and lengthened, I agree with you. Otherwise, it should be merged. Jzxpertguitarist (talk) 00:57, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

 Oppose merge. I agree w/ InMooseWeTrust that we should wait and see. I think we should re-address the issue in two weeks. ~ Justin Ormont (talk) 01:12, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

 Support merge. Unless the United States public employee protests 2011 article can be lengthened and cleaned up, there's really no use for it. Jzxpertguitarist (talk) 17:57, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

 Strongly Oppose merge. I agree with the "wait and see" suggestion. I would tend to guess that eventually it should be merged. Gandydancer (talk) 13:24, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't see this letting up at all. At this point I've changed my position from oppose to strongly oppose. Gandydancer (talk) 01:03, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

 Support merge. SweetNightmares (talk) 22:22, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

 Support merge. It's too early to already make an article about the wave of protests in the United States because the only protests that is notable is still the one in Wisconsin.Xx1994xx (talk)

 Support merge. At this time the merge is logical, unless other states should have protests which grow in notability.--Yaksar (let's chat) 05:03, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

That lack of individual notability is the reason I support keeping 2011 United States public employee protests its own article. The purpose of that article is to talk about the various protests around the country. The other protests may have been chronologically after the Wisconsin protests, but I believe the first shot could have been fired in one of those locations and similar results would have formed. From that argument, there is nothing special about the Wisconsin protests other then it coming first. There are two types of related, non-Wisconsin, protests: (1) People protesting their own state's proposals, and (2) People protesting in support of Wisconsin. I do not support merging type (1) information into the Wisconsin article. As each of protests in the other states are small enough to not have their own article, there should remain an article to summarize the protests in the other states . I did a trivial amount of cleanup in that article, but someone should take a pass at it. (still oppose merge) ~ Justin Ormont (talk) 08:11, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

 Oppose merge. I imagine a lot of people think that only Wisconsin is notable for reasons that aren't supported by evidence. CBS News and CNN reported that there were support rallies for Wisconsin in all 50 states. It's a national thing. Perhaps events that are likely to come will help people pull their heads out of the sand, but my head is where CBS and CNN already are. This is a national thing. Zachary Klaas (talk) 06:17, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

 Support merge. S51438 (talk) 02:22, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

 oppose merge. The article is already way too long. Decora (talk) 13:49, 10 March 2011 (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.

Restructuring and expansion, please assist

I started a major restructuring and expansion effort on 2011 United States public employee protests, which is the page in question. Please assist. I'm looking to structure the page to focus on each state which has relevant proposed legislation.
By National Journal's count, there are twelve states which have proposed legislation which would restrict or remove unions' collective bargaining rights and another five states which have proposed legislation which would negatively affect unions.

<ref name="nationaljournalUnionLegislationMap">{{cite news | url=http://nationaljournal.com/union-protests-spread-across-the-u-s--20110307 | title=Union Protests Spread Across the U.S. | accessdate=March 07, 2011 | author=Julia Edwards and Kevin Brennan | date=March 07, 2011 | publisher=[[National Journal]]}}</ref>

~ Justin Ormont (talk) 01:53, 8 March 2011 (UTC)