Talk:David Harris (advocate)

Is he Jewish? The article does not say. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.7.157.236 (talk) 02:41, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I added a disambiguation paragraph. Maybe it should be integrated into another paragraph and the reference format cleaned up a bit. Gentlemath (talk) 05:58, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

very dubious sources

This article seems to have no respect for WP:RS whatever. The prize is taken by the "Awards" section, which is mostly taken from something called Weekly Blitz, a Bangladeshi tabloid. The article is now gone, but can be viewed on archive.org. The author of the article was Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, who calls him a brother and is said on the current Weekly Blitz website to be now in jail (apparently for embezzlement). Is this a reliable source about an American political activist? Zero^talk 04:45, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Two (consecutive) footnotes, pointing to the same URL

Something doesn't seem right, because (as of this [current] version), footnotes "[6]" and "[7]" both link to the same URL, but assign it a different title. (The URL is http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion.forum/story/2011-11-01/republicans-democrats-jewish-voters/51018892/1 and the actual title of that "/news/opinion.forum/story/" ("Column: Will GOP fumble opening with Jewish voters?"), seems to match (more closely) the title given by footnote "[6]" than that of footnote "[7]".

some History

A footnote was added (inserted) during this edit, and it appears that the new footnote had the exact same URL as the previous footnote, even before any later changes were made.

What happened next

I question whether [what is now] footnote "[7]" ever had a URL that linked to an article with a title anywhere close to "Most Popular E-mail Newsletter". Note that many parts of the "cite web" template for footnote "[7]" seem to have been copied from footnote "[6]" after the above mentioned edit. I think most (or all) of those changes occurred during this edit, by a robot, which changed a lot of {{cite web}} templates to {{cite news}} instead, and -- in this case -- made a {{cite news}} template out of a "ref" tag that had been previously just a bare URL wrapped in a "ref" tag. That [robot] edit is labeled as "m" (minor), and it was made by RjwilmsiBot (talk | contribs) circa 19:19, (in some time zone) on 4 December 2011.

At first I thought that the entry of fields such as ((" | work=USA Today ")) and (( | date=October 31, 2011 )) there, [seemingly mostly just copied from the immediately preceding footnote], might have been presumptuous on the part of the robot making those changes -- or (should I say?) "the author of" said bot; ...but now it is obvious, that the robot just used the URL, and paid no attention to the fact that said URL was identical to the URL for the immediately preceding footnote.

...and, as for where the ((" | title=Most Popular E-mail Newsletter ")) came from, I wish I knew.

Ooops, wait a minute. Maybe I do know, now! (I checked, and, it turns out that... : ) Doing a Google search for (( +"Most Popular E-mail Newsletter" site:usatoday.com )) gives an interesting bunch of hits, and -- at least when I did it -- the Google robot displaying the hits, seems to have made the same mistake that the "editing robot" User:RjwilmsiBot (talk | contribs) made on 4 December 2011. (I realize that, if that bot is still extant, then it might have been modified long ago, to do a better job of figuring out titles -- or at least, to be less confident in its own ability to figure out titles, "if appropriate"; but this comment is about cleaning up a certain footnote of a certain article, which is currently in a certain state.)

What was the mistake made by the Google robot displaying the hits? Well, in several of the hits I saw (and you are welcome to try this yourself! ..especially if the Google robot has not changed, by the time you read this. Just click here! : "some "hits"! and scroll down past the ads ... :-) ) ... umm, in several of the hits I saw, the character string "Most Popular E-mail Newsletter" was not only present in the little preview, which the Google robot provides free of charge, but it was even in bold font! I can't pretend to be "100%" sure as to what did happen, but it sure does appear that, the Google robot that prepares and formats those little previews (one for each "hit"), AND the Wikipedia "editor" bot User:RjwilmsiBot (talk | contribs) which made the edit [mentioned above] (an edit that happened on 4 December 2011), ** both ** somehow tried to parse the (admittedly complex!) ocean of HTML that consititutes the web page that one could "visit" by clicking on one of those hits -- and both made the same mistake.

In trying to figure out what the "title" is, of a certain web page, a human person would probably spend a short amount of time looking at the rendered web page, and just see what looks like a headline ... and figure that, the headline is probably the title. For a robot, the intermediate steps might include, [A] figuring out how the page would be rendered (by a common or garden variety web browser) (or -- for some of us -- it might even be a web-capable [smart] phone) and then [B] proceeding to decide which part would "look" (to a person!) like the headline. I am NOT saying that it's easy (for a robot). It certainly is hard for me, when I am looking at a "show source" dump (of the HTML for a web page) to figure out what's what. However, it is easy for me, when looking at an article in an ink-on-paper newspaper (or for that matter, an ink-on-paper encyclopedia), to figure out what the title -- or headline -- is, for a certain article. And, in the case of a web page that is being displayed on my computer screen, the degree of difficulty is almost as low (easy) as for an ink-on-paper magazine or newspaper.

Apparently, USA Today likes to put an ad for their own e-mail newsletter, on a lot of their online ["article"] web pages. Fair enough. The title (it seems) is often exactly this character string: "Most Popular E-mail Newsletter". OK, ...no problem.

But it does seem that, in the arena of figuring out what the "title" is, of a certain "article", using the online ["article"] web page (in computer readable form), you might (umm), have some room for improvement, in the skills of doing so correctly, if you are a robot and you do not (yet) have a visual cortex.

...But footnotes "[6]" and "[7]" still both link to the same URL, and I do not know ("at this time") what to do about it. Maybe the author of this edit (the edit where the "twin" URL was added) can recall what the "intent" was, back on (circa) 08:31, 22 November 2011 [in some time zone]. That editor is shown as "Jeffenglish3274 (talk | contribs)". However, since the "User:" page is now a red link, ...I am not holding my breath.

Conclusion

Even if we can't fix that footnote (the one that is now footnote "[7]"), it is possible that the maintainers of two robots -- the Google robot, and maybe also the RjwilmsiBot (talk | contribs) Bot -- might want to "consider" revamping their algorithms for extracting the "title" from a web page -- at least in the case of a USAtoday dot com web page.

Just my 0.02. --Mike Schwartz (talk) 08:26, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Advocate

Should the title of this article be changed from "advocate" to "American political activist"? Or is that too close too David Harris (activist)? Figaroefig (talk) 22:39, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

"American political activist" isn't descriptive enough for this David Harris and to remove confusion with the anti-Vietnam activist David Harris and former CEO of the NJDC David Harris. In addition, I don't see much of a difference between an advocate and an activist. My suggestion:

• David Harris (advocate) --> David Harris (activist, born 1949)
• David Harris (activist) --> David Harris (activist, born 1946)

Longhornsg (talk) 01:29, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Ah, these are much better. Thanks for your reply @Longhornsg. I personally like the addition of the birth dates, but if you don't feel strongly that "advocate" needs to be changed, no use going through the trouble. Best, Figaroefig (talk) 17:35, 2 August 2023 (UTC)