Talk:Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference

DYK nom

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cwmhiraeth (talk) 19:51, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

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• ... that the press conference held at a Philadelphia landscaping company by Donald Trump's presidential campaign has inspired a virtual charity run to be held today? Source: "The Four-Seasons-Hotel-Four-Seasons-Total-Landscaping mixup. (ICYMI, the Trump campaign booked the landscaping business for a press conference, which maybe would have been fine had President Trump not mistaken it for the swanky hotel, then tweeted the location out to his 88.9 million followers ... And now, that moment will be commemorated by an 11-mile charity run from the Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Northeast Philly to the Four Seasons hotel in Center City ... Now anyone can test out the route on Sunday, November 29th" "And Now, a Charity Run From Four Seasons Total Landscaping to the Four Seasons Hotel", Philadelphia magazine, November 10, 2020

• Reviewed: Mihoko Fujimura
• Comment: This article just passed AfD, a nomination made within 15 minutes of its creation. While it was on AfD, it could not be nominated. So the whole week was tolled; therefore the late nomination.

  I want this hook to run on November 29, the date of the Fraud Street Run.
  Created by User101010 (talk), NedFausa (talk), Itisdiplomatic (talk), Aluxosm (talk), and AleatoryPonderings (talk). Nominated by Daniel Case (talk) at 06:28, 16 November 2020 (UTC).

• Daniel Case: Thanks for the cred but I definitely don't deserve it! I just archived some links :) AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 14:48, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

@AleatoryPonderings: I based my allocation of credit on this piegraph, which puts you second to me in terms of characters added to the article. Perhaps I should, instead, have used the top pie here. Daniel Case (talk) 06:12, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

• I created this article even though I had a feeling it might get an AFD. I'm an infrequent editor, so I'm excited to see it get past the AFD and on to this nomination. Many thanks to all who have helped it take off. --User101010 (talk) 00:00, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
• UPDATE: I amended the hook to reflect that the run has turned out to be so popular that the organizers decided to make it a virtual event (run anywhere you can and upload a picture of yourself doing so to social media) since it would be impossible to enforce social distancing with so many people on the route.Source: "But the organizers—a college web developer and a comedian who have a podcast called Junk Miles with Chip & Jeff —had to make it a virtual race because there was so much interest and they needed to avoid large crowds due to COVID-19. 'Too popular,' read one Philadelphia Inquirer headline. (Runners now are supposed to just run anywhere they want on November 28 or 29 and post photos online to prove it.)", The Architects Newspaper; November 16, 2020, Daniel Case (talk) 18:55, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

• Article looks good, no copyvio, new enough. It doesn't need the ALLCAPS in the reaction part. Sources for the run and moving to virtual all fine and cited inline in the article. The hook is interesting. If you have an image of the street of the run, that could be used. Hook and special occasion approved. You can move it to the special occasion slot after the bot moves the nom template to the subpage. Kingsif (talk) 06:15, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

"The event drew humor and parody on social media" vs "The event drew ridicule and parody on social media"

Really want to avoid a potential edit war on this one so am asking for input on the wording of one of the sentences in the Aftermath section. Timeline of edits so far:

• 1st edit - Created original text (The event drew ridicule and parody on social media…)
• 2nd edit - Removed the original text (note that there weren't any references at the time that specifically mentioned the tone of the conversation)
• 3rd edit - Changed back to original text but added reference about tone
• 4th edit - Kept the original text but changed ridicule for humor (note that the references at the time didn't specifically mention the word ridicule)

I've since found two articles that mention the word ridicule but want to avoid citation overkill:

• Brewton, Dara (2020-11-08). "'Laugh about it forever': Twitter rolling on the floor over Rudy's Four Seasons mix up". Front Page Live. Retrieved 2020-11-11. As can be expected, Twitter was full of ridicule.

• "Rudy Giuliani's "Four Seasons Total Landscaping" press conference gets its own web portal thanks to Writer/Producer Vinnie Favale" (Press release). Lincroft, NJ: PR Newswire. Favale Media. 2020-11-09. Retrieved 2020-11-11. …[the event] attracted ridicule and disbelief on social media.

My personal thoughts are that the word humor is too relaxed and that one of the main reasons that this event is significant is because of the amount of ridicule that it received. Also, the term is followed up with "and parody" which in my mind already suggests humour. Most of all though, I feel like the original sentence just sounds more natural.

Pinging @Daniel Case and @Itisdiplomatic but any other thoughts on this would be great. Many thanks in advance! Aluxosm (talk) 21:11, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

My thoughts is that the word "ridicule" is too excessive and not neutral. The jokes and joking mentioned in the citations are based on the mistaken belief that the choice of venue was not intentional. "Humor" acknowledges that there has been mocking and parody in a neutral way without mentioning "ridicule" based on mistaken beliefs as the article has already addressed the backstory as to why and how the press conference location was chosen.Itisdiplomatic (talk) 23:10, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

I suppose we'd be best off using "ridicule", but perhaps in quotes and attributed.

I am also not sure that it has been conclusively established that the choice of venue was not a mistake ... we have only heard this from unnamed employees at the landscaping company; AFAIK the Trump campaign itself has said nothing as to why this happened.

I also don't find the logic convincing ... the local Republican ward boss says no one called him, the Siravo family is not terribly active in local politics, and the coincidence of the name is just too unlikely. If it was security they were worried about ... well, surely one of Philadelphia's ritziest hotels has enough personnel at its disposal to keep the riffraff out? One that's more or less walking distance from the Convention Center? Daniel Case (talk) 22:30, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your input Itisdiplomatic! For context, the full sentence in the article already states that the reaction was based on a mistaken belief:

The event drew humor and parody on social media, where it was assumed the Trump campaign had simply made a mistake with the booking.

Your comments also led me to checking the sources for the claim that the choice of venue was actually intentional. Ironically, I found an interesting statement in the only reference, The New York Times' article:

• Karni, Annie; Corasaniti, Nick (2020-11-07). "Which Four Seasons? Oh, not that one". The New York Times. Retrieved 2020-11-12. The correction quickly met with derision and glee among many blue-checkmark Twitter users, who assumed the campaign had accidentally booked the wrong venue.

derision and ridicule happen to both redirect to the same article here on Wikipedia. Aluxosm (talk) 15:43, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Frankly, I see no reason whatsoever why an encyclopedia should make a vague, unsourced allusion to "users on social media". Last I checked, there are hundreds of millions, if not billions of social media users in the world. Surely, every opinion you can conceive of (and some you probably can't) have been expressed on social media regarding the Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference. Why would a sentence be randomly inserted in an encyclopedia article to highlight the fact that some users on social media reacted with derision and mockery? Perhaps because the original writer(s) of this sentence were inclined to believe that the press conference was worthy of derision, as does everyone else in their personal bubble, so they believed that everyone, or everyone who mattered, thought the same way. I happen to think that the press conference was ridiculous to the point of self-parody. But, as someone who has been editing Wikipedia on and off for over 13 years, the recent insistence upon maintaining obviously unencyclopedic, unsourced, and irrelevant language is something I find puzzling. Was there some change in Wikipedia policy that did away with neutrality and objectivity?

I think that the sentence should either be changed, in a way similar, in spirit, to the way I changed it in my edit, or the sentence should be completely removed. Can anyone point me to a Wikipedia policy that welcomes this sort of framing and language in political articles? I'm interested in more information. Philomathes2357 (talk) 01:26, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

@Philomathes2357: The main policy on this one is Wikipedia:Neutral point of view.

The fact is that the vast majority of the reporting on this event by reliable sources has been about the ridiculousness of it. There are more than a few references in the article that specifically mention the reaction on social media and none of them talk about "praise", so unless you are proposing that the entire Public reaction section be removed, I'm not sure what the argument is for removing the statement in the lead. The statement in the body is not made by an author of this article, it is a direct quote of CNN.

I agree that not everyone will have laughed at it, but without a citation of a single source saying that the event was praised, it would be wrong to even mention it, let alone give it undue weight and state it in the lead. It would also be wrong to ignore the fact that the reason this event is notable is because of the amount of mockery it received. Just to be clear, I would love to see any reliable reporting to the contrary; more sources and facts about this event can only be a good thing.

P.s. Many thanks for contributing to the discussion instead of edit warring. Aluxosm (talk) 02:53, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

@Philomathes2357: It's in the article, I think, because the news coverage (as Aluxosm noted before an edit conflict) included a lot of "Look at the clever things people said about this on Twitter!", an angle which seems to me to be of dubious relevance (I mean, where were "Look at all the clever things people are saying about this on Usenet!" stories back in the early '90s, when I was in my early 20s and was one of the people saying clever things online that the media could and should have quoted? ) but even if Wikipedia policies allowed for us to express this sort of judgmental attitude by not saying anything about in our articles, we're beyond the point where such complaints would amount to anything because it's just become part of the world we live in, even if it feels, well, so high school (And, after all, as the late Frank Zappa once said, life is like high school, only everyone has more money). Daniel Case (talk) 03:01, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

So we've established that the quote in question is "of dubious relevance" and is more indicative of "high school" behavior, rather than the behavior of adults writing an encyclopedia. I can only reasonably conclude that the overwhelming support for including this dubious and irrelevant sentence is because it comports with and re-emphasizes the political biases of the authors. It's a shame to see Wikipedia has stooped so low. Specifically to Daniel's admission of the "high school" nature of this sentence and the tone it strikes - unless you are, in fact, a high school student, it's your job to do better. Not to make excuses for childish, unencyclopedic content while coyly admitting that the content is juvenile, biased, and not really necessary. Also, the fact that CNN is considered a "perennial reliable source" is comedic gold. I pay attention to the news all day every day, for a living. I consider myself left-of-center on most issues. But I cannot - I refuse - to believe that serious people who pay close attention to these things actually think that fucking CNN is a "perennially reliable source". It looks like Wikipedia may have simply rotted too much in the past decade for it to be worth my time. It's too bad. Good luck with your virtual high school cafeteria brawls. Philomathes2357 (talk) 18:30, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

@Philomathes2357: I think you may have misunderstood Daniel, I don't believe that he was saying that the quote was of "dubious relevance", just the Twitter angle to some of the reporting.

My understanding of an encyclopedia is a thing that contains all of the relevant information about a range of subjects. This article has already gone through an AFD with the overwhelming majority voting to keep it; that would suggest to me that this article is worthy of an entry in this encyclopedia. With that set, we need to include all of the relevant information about the event. The main point of mine that I think you're still missing is, whether you like it or not, the reason this event is notable, is because of the amount of ridicule it received, if it were not, there wouldn't need to be an article about it because it would just be another press conference. I don't understand why you would want to censor the main reason for the event's notability. Ignoring the social media reaction, how did you interpret the rest of the coverage? I'm really struggling to find anyone mentioning "praise".

CNN is far from the only source that specifically mentions the word 'ridicule', it just makes sense to only use one source because the alternative is a list of every publication that states that the event was ridiculed/mocked/derided, or an overcited statement. Aluxosm (talk) 19:57, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Way of decision - How did the press conference come about?

I still can't understand how the press conference actually came about, and I can't find any evidence. There are some theories, but they don't really explain everything.

• Did you consciously want to hold the conference there from the start?
• Trump tweeted too early that the press conference was taking place in the hotel, the hotel knew nothing about it and a "solution" had to be found?
• The conference was supposed to take place at the hotel, but the wrong company had been contacted and the error was noticed too late

Sean Middleton had commented on it and he had no idea why, he could only guess. Is also the question of when he was contacted. What is the exact timeline? Another question is how the hotel knew that the conference was being held at the gardeners' premises. The hotel replied directly to Trump, the exact timeline is also unclear to me here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:c7:2f04:2400:e08c:5b8f:9b80:e46e (talk) 13:24, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

As stated in the article, the official line is that it was intentional, however the message got lost in translation when Trump was told. The only reference for this is The New York Times who spoke with "multiple people familiar with the matter". In my opinion, it's possible, just highly unlikely ...I mean, surely there was at least one other secure place they could have used that was slight more upmarket? (no offense FSTL!) The story just gets a bit muddy when you're aware of how many times the Trump campaign has lied about things and if you use Occam's razor. We may know for sure someday, just not today. For more information about the timeline, take a look at the Tweet times topic. Aluxosm (talk) 15:55, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

As well as what I've observed above, in another subsection ... it seems entirely too coincidental that another business with "Four Seasons" in the name just happened to be the one they booked, one of the sort no one would think a likely place to hold a press conference. It's like they decided afterwards to say "we meant to do this". Daniel Case (talk) 17:51, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

I've been wondering the same thing! There is no clear answer. Maybe someday the landscaping company will share their end of the event. --User101010 (talk) 19:57, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

They've already given their end, suggesting it was deliberate on the campaign's part. The campaign is who really needs to speak on this one ... I mean, at least with the similar Michael Dukakis tank ride, we've had plenty of people from the campaign willing to talk in later years about how it went wrong. The fact that no one from the campaign has explained this one yet suggests a similar cockup behind the scenes. Daniel Case (talk) 05:22, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

@User101010 & @Daniel Case: there has been a small development to the story!

• Gabbatt, Adam (December 2, 2020). "Tourists flock to Four Seasons Total Landscaping after Giuliani debacle". The Guardian. Retrieved December 2, 2020. Trump himself lent weight to the idea of mistaken identity when he tweeted, then deleted, that the press conference was at "Four Seasons, Philadelphia". Four Seasons Total Landscaping poured water on the theory, however. "That's not the case," said Sean Middleton, director of sales. "I gave them the address, I said where we were, where they can meet us, and that was that."

Attention collaborators (User101010—Daniel Case—AleatoryPonderings—Itisdiplomatic—NedFausa—Y2kcrazyjoker4—Renewableandalternativeenergy), there's been some big news. It's the story we've all been waiting for (...well I have at least), an article from The Philadelphia Inquirer has interviews with the staff at FSTL regarding the order of events and it sheds a huge amount of light on this story - They think the New York Times' account of the situation is likely the most accurate.

• Goodin-Smith, Oona (December 1, 2020). "Philly's Four Seasons Total Landscaping dishes the dirt on the news conference heard 'round the world: 'It was nothing we anticipated'". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved December 3, 2020. So Middleton drove to Philadelphia to meet Siravo's son, Michael — the company's operations manager — and Trump campaign staff at the landscaping office. After about 10 minutes, Middleton said the Trump staff decided Four Seasons Total Landscaping was the place. By 9:45 a.m., the deal was sealed.

Aluxosm (talk) 11:36, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

I'd still like to hear the campaign's side of this. They may have delegated the actual task of making the phone call to some low-level person not in Philadelphia, not familiar with Center City, who went with the first phone number that came up on a search. Middleton's account is not inconsistent with that. Daniel Case (talk) 17:53, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

@Daniel Case: For sure! The timeline is interesting but it still doesn't clear up the main question: who could possibly think that it was a good idea to book this particular venue? 😂 (again, no offense FSTL) The fact that the initial inquiry of the venue's availability came just three hours before the event started, leads me to think that it was just so rushed that the right questions (like... the name of the business) weren't asked by anyone involved in the planning. Aluxosm (talk)

I've just added some very interesting information to the timeline. The times are from an interview that Middleton did with ICON shortly after the event. Aluxosm (talk) 20:49, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Converting most of the 'Public reaction' section to a bulleted list?

I was about to add this fact into the article:

• A picture of the press conference appeared at number 24 on The Atlantic's "Top 25 News Photos of 2020".

References

but the place that I think it belongs in (the Public reaction section) is getting pretty busy, so I created an example of what the section would look like if it were converted to a bulleted format instead. It still needs a bit of work (see: MOS:LISTBULLET), but I think it looks a lot cleaner and is easier to read. Anyone have any thoughts on this? Cheers! Aluxosm (talk) 12:14, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure that this is the sort of mention we need to obsessively log. Daniel Case (talk) 19:06, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Fraud Street Run 2021

A note for next year - looks like the Fraud Street Run will be happening again!

• Swim, Karen; Michelle, Kane (December 7, 2020). "PR Lessons from The Fraud Street Run with Jeff Lyons". That Solo Life: The Solo PR Pro Podcast. Episode 77. Event occurs at 23:20. Retrieved December 17, 2020. [Jeff Lyons] So I think the onus is on us now, how are we gonna do this next year?

Aluxosm (talk) 16:52, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Correcting a Quote

This quote is wrong: "Come on, don't be ridiculous. Networks don't get to decide elections. Courts do."<ref name="Ended at Four Seasons Total Landscaping" />

Per video of the press conference @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QTRO9MG6z8 it should read: "Woooooow! All the networks? We have to forget the law! Judges don't count!"

I don't know how to insert the link to the Youtube link, so would someone else fix it, please, and perhaps instruct me how I can do it myself if the need arises some time in the future?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Fringe Dweller (talk • contribs) 03:31, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

@Fringe Dweller: I've just fixed this by correcting and expanding on the quote. I used the C-SPAN video as a reference as the Rev transcript was a little off. Aluxosm (talk) 20:34, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

@Aluxosm: Thank you. Looks like I have to find some tutorials about linking, formatting and so on. Fringe Dweller (talk) 02:46, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

@Fringe Dweller: My apologies, I missed the end of your comment there, potentially because it wasn't signed.

I think the main thing you're after is information on citing sources; essentially, the "link" as you put it, is enclosed in ref tags like this:

<ref>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QTRO9MG6z8</ref>

That is a pretty basic way to do it but is all that is really needed. A better way is to use a template like {{cite web}}, this allows you to add the information to the citation in a machine readable manner so that it can be formatted correctly:

<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QTRO9MG6z8 |title=Four Seasons Total Landscaping Press Conference - Long Version |work=[[Associated Press]] |publisher=[[YouTube]]}}</ref>

Please see the guidance on on linking to YouTube but in this case it would be fine, I only used the C-SPAN video because there was already a citation for me to use.

The majority of the references on this page are in what's called list defined references format (see this topic above), this declutters the wikitext of the article and makes it easier to manage the citations. This is done by adding a name to the reference like this:

<ref name="example" />

and then defining it in the reflist like this:

<ref name="example">{{cite web|...}}</ref>

As I mentioned though, just sticking something in ref tags is enough to begin with, then someone with more experience can fill it out. You can try things out in your sandbox if you want to experiment.

A good place to start if you're looking for more information is Help:Introduction to the Manual of Style, but if you'd like to just ask a question, see here or feel free to ask me on my talk page. Good luck and have fun on your Wikipedia adventure! Aluxosm (talk) 10:05, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks again, @Aluxosm:. This is an excellent entry point for me, someone whose previous editing activity has been chiefly limited to correcting spelling errors. Fringe Dweller (talk) 12:40, 5 January 2021 (UTC)