Talk:Alphonso David

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

• Alphonso David.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 16:06, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Requesting a more neutral presentation of events

I am requesting the following edits so that the article will be more balanced and neutral in its presentation of the facts that are found in the sources.

• Please replace the current second paragraph of the introductory section with the following: In August 2021, he received public backlash after a report released by New York Attorney General Letitia James accused David’s former employer, Governor Andrew Cuomo, of sexual harassment. The report indicated that David provided a Cuomo employee with the personnel file of Lindsey Boylan, a woman who had accused Cuomo of sexual harassment. The report also alleges that David received a copy of an unpublished op-ed targeting Boylan; after refusing to sign on to the op-ed himself, he offered to circulate it to other former Cuomo employees.
• In the section called "Counsel to New York Governor Cuomo", in the fourth paragraph, please remove Letitia James's nickname "Tish" in the first sentence. It is not needed here and seems out-of-place in an article about Alphonso David.
• Later in the same sentence, please remove the descriptive words "the full" from the sentence: the source does not say David provided "the full" personnel files, and saying so is misleading in a highly negative way.
• In the next sentence of the same paragraph, please replace "helped to draft a letter" and replace with "received a copy of a letter" which is what the source says, and not the former.

Thanks so much for your help. LS for David (talk) 17:12, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: No sources. Quetstar (talk) 21:19, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Hi Quetstar, I apologize for not clarifying that the sources are exactly the same, since the basic information is the same. The problem with the Wikipedia article as it is now is that it is not a neutral rendition of the facts that are presented in the sources, and in some cases the information is straight-out incorrect. I can take you through each above request and explain what I mean:

• Saying David played a "key role" is someone's opinion about his role. Nowhere in the source does it say he played a "key role." In addition, the phrase "smear campaign" is highly negative, and it is not used in the source, therefore it should not be used in Wikipedia.
• I do not think we need a source to remove "Tish" from the sentence. Letitia James' nickname is completely irrelevant in an article about Alphonso David.
• Nowhere in the Washington Post source does it say that David handed over "the full" personnel files of Boylan. Only that he handed over "files." Saying he handed over "the full personnel files" is highly misleading and negative, as I already said above.
• Nowhere in the Washington Post source does it say that David "helped to draft a letter". Saying so is negatively misleading and not supported by the source.

I kindly ask you to read the two sources, the first from The Hill, and the second from The Washington Post, and I think you will see that the current Wikipedia article is misleading at best, and incorrect at worst. Thank you for your consideration. LS for David (talk) 17:05, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

After further review, I have determined that they are no issues with the article, so it will remain as is. This request is therefore denied once and for all. Quetstar (talk) 18:32, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Blanking of Awards section

Consensus seems to suggest that this section should not be blanked, as multiple different editors have reverted the blanking of 2600:100F:B010:D905:E9B9:633B:76B6:C052. As they have performed this action more than three times, this seems to suggest edit warring. Would this user please explain the rationale behind this edit instead of continuing to revert?

Request to update the lead sentence

Hi again. While Alphonso David is no longer the president of HRC, he remains a civil rights activist. I propose changing the lead sentence to reflect this more accurately:

Alphonso David (born 1970) is an American lawyer and LGBT civil rights advocate. Thanks for your help, LS for David (talk) 19:31, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

References

 Done RFZYNSPY ^talk 03:31, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Fix Infobox mistake; Create more neutral presentation; add dates

Thank you RFZYNSPY for the above edit. I am calling on you to please look over the following requests which correct a mistake, add some details, and also create a more neutral presentation of the facts in the article.

• In the Infobox the birthyear is incorrect and should be changed to 1970 as it appears in the Introduction and is supported by the following source which is already cited in the article: http://amsterdamnews.com/news/2014/jan/31/politics-alphonso-davids-blood-whether-he-likes-it/
• Please remove the word "Controversies" from the "Career and Controversies" section. According to Wikipedia:CSECTION, Biographies of Living People should avoid aggregating controversial events into one section, and therefore should not have sections with the word 'controversies' in the title.
• In the fourth paragraph of the "Counsel to New York Governor Cuomo" section, I am proposing a more accurate and less sensationalized version of the story, closer to the way it is presented in the following NPR source. I am requesting that the fourth paragraph follow more closely that source, and therefore be written as follows: 'In New York Attorney General Letitia James's report of allegations of sexual harassment by Cuomo, released in August 2021, David's role in responding to a request for a memo of former Cuomo advisor Lindsey Boylan to the governor's office is discussed. The report also states that David refused to sign a letter in defense of Cuomo and which questioned Boylan's motivations. The letter was never released.'
• The fifth (last) paragraph in the "Counsel to New York Governor Cuomo" section should be removed because the previous paragraph already presents the most relevant details outlining the incident, and any additional paragraphs are redundant and present the problem of WP:UNDUE.
• In the "President of the Human Rights Campaign" section, please add that David became president of the Human Rights campaign in August 2019. And add that he was removed from that position in September 2021.

References

Thank you so much for all your efforts. LS for David (talk) 14:53, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Previous review of the edit request by Quetstar that was undone

Not done: Denied due to potential whitewashing. Quetstar (talk) 18:10, 29 September 2021 (UTC)  Question: Quetstar, why did you deny this requested edit? RFZYNSPY talk 01:15, 1 October 2021 (UTC) @RFZYNSPY: i denied it because of the proposed changes in the career and counsel sections, which i deemed to be whitewahsing as i think the controversy surronding him is notable enough for inclusion. Quetstar (talk) 01:44, 1 October 2021 (UTC) Quetstar While I may or may not agree with the decision to decline the request, I'm disappointed you didn't provide this level of specificity when you made your closure. You shouldn't have to be prompted. You've seen plenty of notices on your talk page from Sdrqaz, Chiro725, and ScottishFinnishRadish (tagged here - if any one of you wants to contribute to this discussion please feel free, especially if any of you disagree with this message) saying that your answers to requested edits are unspecific. Do you understand that in the future you need to provide good justification and be specific? In addition to specificity, I'm unsure why this edit in particular was declined. The requester needs to know how their request is whitewashing. Once you provide good reasoning for your answer, other editors like myself can come along and agree or disagree with your answer. I choose to disagree with the request being denied due to whitewashing. Perhaps you could make a case that the request doesn't follow WP:NPOV regarding race? Even then I think that would be a stretch. tl;dr your edit request answers are lacking in explanation and context which serves to hide the flimsy reasoning behind your decisions. I encourage you to stop answering edit requests for a moment and take time to read about the requested edit process and what sort of policy issues might get requests denied. Everyone appreciates that you're taking care of many articles on the COI backlog but I argue that your disregard for quality editing is doing more harm than good. RFZYNSPY talk 04:47, 1 October 2021 (UTC) @RFZYNSPY I have a KISS (keep it simple, stupid) approach when replying to edit requests because i don't want to go into long explanations and reasoning, which i consider to be unproductive. Furthermore, I have reopened this ER. Quetstar (talk) 05:14, 1 October 2021 (UTC) Quetstar I appreciate you opening the ER back up. You can always re-deny it in the future but please make sure you explain very specifically why it's denied. The KISS method is great for low-profile and non-controversial edits but it doesn't work too well with detailed edit requests such as COI. If providing specificity for the requester isn't your jam please do it for the editors who may come along to the edit request and wonder why it was answered a certain way. Often times COI ERs have in-depth discussions with many editors and the ER is only answered after a consensus is reached. Again, I appreciate you opening the ER back up and I sincerely hope to see you around COI in the future. RFZYNSPY talk 05:27, 1 October 2021 (UTC) The issue I had was their closing of a talk page discussion started by myself after a BLPN thread. It was not an edit request or an RFC. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 09:13, 1 October 2021 (UTC) ScottishFinnishRadish My mistake. RFZYNSPY talk 19:58, 1 October 2021 (UTC) I think my stance on Quetstar's approach to dealing with the COI edit requests queue is clear, RFZYNSPY. Dealing with the COI edit requests queue is harder than dealing with the other queues. While it's tempting to reject all of them with "too promotional", that is not helpful and encourages undisclosed paid editing. Keeping it simple, while perhaps a good philosophy in general life, is unproductive in this field. It's disappointing that my advice has not been taken onboard. Sdrqaz (talk) 21:46, 2 October 2021 (UTC) @Sdrqaz I understand, but I am very direct (to the point of me being rude sometimes) when i object to requests, which, along with the reasoning i gave above, is why i use KISS. I am, however, open to changing my approach. Quetstar (talk) 22:20, 2 October 2021 (UTC) I'm very glad to hear that. Thank you for taking this extra effort. Sdrqaz (talk) 22:31, 2 October 2021 (UTC) Quetstar, the problem is I don't see any immediate application of Wikipedia:Keep it short and simple in your rejections which lack appropriate referral to the policy violations and/or lacks any further guidance which may keep the requester in the edit request process and prohibit from us who deal with the edit requests facing same requests showing up time and again. There is a reason Wikipedia has this time tested scope of COI Edit Request workflow. Just as Sdrqaz, RFZYNSPY and ScottishFinnishRadish mentioned, I think there is a need of changing your approach to mark your contributions as fruitful and effective. Best of Luck. Chirota (talk) 19:56, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi RFZYNSPY. I am trying again to get at least some, if not all, of the elements of the above edit request implemented.

1. Bullet point #1 corrects a mistake in the Infobox, and should not be a problem to implement. The body of the article states David's birthday correctly, but for some reason the Infobox has it wrong. He was born in 1970 and the source supports that date.
2. Bullet point #2 asks for the word "controversies" be removed as per Wikipedia:CSECTION.
3. The third and fourth bullet points remain as above.
4. The fifth (last) bullet point was partially implemented. All that is left is to add that David became president of the Human Rights campaign in August 2019. The source is in the request above.

Thanks so much for all your help. LS for David (talk) 16:57, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi. I am calling on the following editors, who have been on this page in the past, to please examine my most recent edit requests above, which are pretty simple and straightforward. I would really appreciate whatever help you can give. RFZYNSPY and Sdrqaz Thanks again. LS for David (talk) 17:36, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

@LS for David:

1.  Done
2.  Done
3.  Partly done: I removed the redundant last paragraph, but I did not reword the fourth paragraph. You wrote "that David refused to sign" while NPR says "David did not sign the letter"–that's not the same. If there's a source that does say David refused, please let me know.
4.  Done

––FormalDude talk 00:12, 10 February 2022 (UTC)