Talk:Michael Weiss (journalist)

Controversies section

First and foremost, Wikipedia is not a PR tool, around just to make someone look awesome. It is an encyclopedia aimed at presenting accurate information. Michael Weiss is a prolific writer and regular commentator on CNN. It is hardly uncommon for those who have such prolific opinions to have criticism's of said opinions. It took 2 seconds of googling for me to find such criticisms. I did not delete any positive pieces of information and adding criticism does not automatically turn an article into a WP:Coatrack. If you want to see an coatrack see Frank Gaffney's page.

Blanket deletions of material is not acceptable. It does appear that the blanket deletions were done by Weiss himself, or friends of his. That being said, there is a distinct possibility that User: Plot Spoiler has a pre-existing relationship with Weiss, because some of his blanket deletions have little foundation. WP:Sockpuppet's will be reported. Also, if true, as an experienced editor you should know better.

• Your excuse that "Wordpress blog is not WP:RS" disregards the exception of "self-published material may sometimes be acceptable when its author is an established expert whose work in the relevant field." Marko Attila Hoare is a noted expert with who formerly at the Henry Jackson Society. His personal blog should be considered RS. At the very least it deserves a consensus.
• Your statement that the cited piece from The Nation is an op-ed is false. The piece is clearly labeled as an "Article"
• ShiaPac is a non profit aimed at fighting discrimination agianst Shia muslims. Unless you can provide a clear explanation for why it is "clearly not WP:RS" then it deserves a consensus.

I am happy to work with people to make this an accurate article. Some of Plot Spoiler's deletions have some validity and I will revise the article accordingly. However, blanket deletions and sockpuppetry are not ok and will not be tolerated.The Armchair General (talk) 21:59, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

I saw this article referenced on COI/N and actually I agree that it has serious BLP issues. COI notwithstanding, the BLP issues are paramount and in fact are overarching. "Controversies" sections are frowned upon, and in this case it dominates the article. Coretheapple (talk) 23:58, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Also: who are you addressing? Edit summaries? Yours is the first comment on the page. I disagree with your three specific points above. The Nation source is an opinion/analysis article, written by the head of a pro-Russian organization. Self-published blogs are not acceptable for negative content in BLPs, and neither is ShiaPac. Whatever the COI issue happens to exist here, and it is pretty obvious, that is no excuse for throwing BLP out the window. Please do not add back in that material, which I have removed. I have posted on this in BLPN. Lastly, I don't think you should throw around accusations of sockpuppetign. User:Plot Spoiler is an established account and I don't see the the basis of your claim of COI. I agree the SPA is problematic. If you have suspicions of either COI or sockpuppeting you should raise them either at WP:SPI and COI/N. Coretheapple (talk) 00:28, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Sourcing

The sourcing of this article is inadequate. We have his alleged high school and graduating class referenced to a high school newspaper, for instance. Not sure, but apparently his place of birth is based on that as well, and if so it is not acceptable. Also his age appears to have been surmised. We need sourcing for biographical details. A personal web page or Who's Who entry would do. Coretheapple (talk) 14:19, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

I’m new to editing so please excuse my ignorance but I tried adding some biographical information but it was reverted because the source was apparently not reliable. How does one go about ensuring factual data is imputed into someones articles, if the only source for that information is not considered “reliable?” Does it just get left out? The Happy Warrior (talk) 16:09, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, pretty much so. Sourcing standards are included in a few pages, including the "verifiability" policy and the policy on biographies of living persons. These policies are fairly strict on biographies. Also, sometimes material from even reliable sources is not included if that text is out of proportion within the article. (See WP:UNDUE) It takes a bit of practice to get accustomed to these rules. If in doubt, or if your change is reverted back, the best thing to do is to do what you're doing right now, which is to ask questions on the article discussion page. This article is indeed sparse because there are so few reliable sources. Coretheapple (talk) 21:27, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

WP:COATRACKing

I have removed a rather silly and obviously POV pushing coatracking reference. The link to this article about Pamela Geller does not mention Michael Weiss at all, it has nothing to do with him. I have replaced it with a neutral reference which explains that the rally he organized, which was clearly not "anti-Muslim".--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:16, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

And then upon further inspection, I removed the entire section about him comparing some Democratic Congress members to Dana Rorbacher for two reasons. The first source, Politico, was an article that is not about Weiss at all - doesn't mention him. It just talks about Rorbacher and as far as I can tell was only included to source the parenthetical "Putin's favorite congressman". The second source was to MintPress, which I don't think is a very good source, see Buzzfeed for more. Our controversies section accused Weiss of complaining simply because someone "retweeted Russian journalists" but his actual tweet shows that he criticized retweeting "an employee of Russian state media". We don't have to agree that this is a valid thing to have done (I have no idea without knowing more context) to realize that it is hardly a 'controversy' for a journalists to make such a criticism.

At this point, the entire section is no longer actually a section on "criticism" for the reason that there doesn't seem to be any grounds for the criticisms that were here. I'm thinking now what to do about that - most likely I will just eliminate the rally entirely, thus eliminating the entire section, but first I want to be sure that the rally isn't notable so I'll do some poking around.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:35, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

• I agree with the removal of the controversies section, which was thinly sourced and badly worded. Much the same kind of text was inserted in 2016 and I see there is another effort being mounted again. Coretheapple (talk) 19:11, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Career section

I’ve added a bit of info about the book Weiss is known for, and expanded some of his known career roles. Renamed the Life and career section just Career, since there was already a Personal life section and the distinction wasn't clear. The Career section is becoming a bit unruly and hard to follow, I feel there is still a bit to do. More broadly, I think this article would benefit from a bit of a facelift – e.g. breaking the Career section down into various sub-sections, giving a better sense of the different publications he’s been involved with, tightening some of the referencing (which is a bit piece-meal right now). I note this page was debated a little while back though, any objections to me taking these edits forward? Happy to discuss. KTnow (talk) 10:40, 27 May 2024 (UTC)