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Template:Did you know nominations/Trump administration family separation policy

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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: rejected by BlueMoonset (talk) 22:46, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
Closing per final comment from reviewer.

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Trump administration family separation policy

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Children separated from family members detained in cages
Children separated from family members detained in cages
  • Comment: Note that there are a few other editors who've improved the article who maybe should be given DYK credit

Created/expanded by Carwil (talk), Pharos (talk), and Gandydancer (talk). Nominated by Volunteer Marek (talk) at 20:12, 18 June 2018 (UTC).

  • All other issues aside (overlap with news and "proposal to split" tags are the most stringent) this article strikes me like it makes absolutely no effort to be NPOV or even to step out of the bubble. It's like none of the editors even bothered finding commentary from authors on the other side, like they did not even glance at a news or commentary source that will not endorse the "Trump is a monster" meme -- it appears largely modeled on the usual spiel from CNN and Vox. This even though conservative commentators have explained their POV at length and have openly expressed criticism of exactly the issues presented as facts in the articles -- for instance here, here or here (there are also conservative critiques of Trump's policy, btw: here or here or here). Under "Support", what we get are reactions from surrogates and cherrypicked, partly misquoted through partisan sources, statements made by the likes of Brian Kilmeade (who is apparently much more relevant than any other conservative who had stuff to say on the subject). Also note he WP:WEASEL in "[Kilmeade] tried to defend" -- you see, you can't defend Trump's policies, you can only "try to defend them, but we know better".
And incidentally: for this article to pass, it needs a fix in the footnotes, where various citations fail to identify the publisher. Dahn (talk) 05:22, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Also, the original hook is a highly contentious claim made during litigation. Are we really basing hooks on stuff said by lawyers defending their clients? (As for the ALT: I personally find it manipulative, since it implies that the policy of arresting adult illegal immigrants is necessarily wrong, and also because it won't tell us what 2,000 is compared to a standard -- the immigrant population, for instance. It's nothing but a poor attempt at sensationalism.) Dahn (talk) 05:28, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Lastly, the "cages" in the picture appear to be standard fixtures of any detention facility. Implying that those are "cages" is simply mendacious. Dahn (talk) 05:30, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
  • @Dahn: It has been a few weeks since your review, and neither the nominator nor the co-creators have responded here. Have your concerns been addressed? If not, this will be failed. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 11:10, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
    • Maybe other users would like to weigh in, but from my part the answer is no: the article is still biased, still overlaps with WP:NEWS (see masthead tag), and still has many unformatted refs; the hook and ALT are still objectionable. Dahn (talk) 18:09, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
@Carwil, Pharos, Gandydancer, and Volunteer Marek: Thoughts? Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 21:37, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
This was a WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT non-constructive review. Fuck it.Volunteer Marek (talk) 01:55, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
(I mean, the major complaint appears to be that the article does not include a couple OPINION pieces from National Review and The Spectator that he happens to fancy. WTF?) Volunteer Marek (talk) 02:37, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
Apparently this reviewer and the references that s/he offered know better than over 200 activists groups, every major religious and medical group, 17 states who have begun lawsuits, a Federal Judge, the ACLU, several international organizations, all four former first ladies, people who donated to a facebook page in an amount that topped anything previously, and such. BTW, this reviewer needs to refresh their knowledge regarding RS sites. Gandydancer (talk) 03:15, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
This reviewer has not asked for you to rewrite the article or to remove references, he has asked for you to include all relevant viewpoints, which is a cornerstone wikipedia policy, and to change the tone of the claims the article makes (per WP:WEASEL). He has also asked you to stop misrepresenting facts in hooks, and has suggested that using one side of a litigation issue as a source for DYK is an absurd precedent. And incidentally, yes: activist groups are always poor sources to use. It is also telling that the users think National Review should not be used as an RS (as opposed to Vox), and then they bring up IDONTLIKEIT -- they don't use sources they disagree with politically, but think my demand for toning down blatantly partisan claims, and citing more viewpoints in a dispute, should be treated as a matter of my personal bias. Dahn (talk) 04:27, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
The "tone" is from the sources - you just WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT what the sources say. The "relevant viewpoints" are represented in proportion to how they're represented in reliable sources - you just WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT what the sources say. And no, I didn't say that NR should not be used - it depends on the contexts and the nature of the piece. Yes, Vox (and it is indeed a higher quality source than NR) is used in the article, but not for opinion pieces and mostly just to cite non-controversial things, like quotes from Trump himself. On the other hand, you basically want us to include some rant somebody wrote for the NR. Sorry man, not how this works.Volunteer Marek (talk) 06:17, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
I'm sorry to inform you so late in your career as a wikipedian, but wikipedia is not journalism, and therefore does not parrot partisan positions taken by the sources; wikipedia has its own rules on how content should be written and structured, which means that it either tones down to a neutral or attributes positions, quoted in full. Beyond that, the proportion of opinions and content you dislike is now 100/0, and you consider this encyclopedic; again, I do not ask you to remove sources, I ask you to add, in proportion to its relevancy (i. e. not zero), from the other side of the argument, and to stop manipulating readers by introducing weasel words in how you render opinions you favor. Incidentally, everything on Vox is an opinion piece, since the organization proudly announces that it "explains the news" -- you can see opinion clearly in essays currently used as sources by the article, such as this one. That in itself is not a problem, as long as at least some commentary from the opposing side, including as just one example the prestigious (much more prestigious than Vox) NR, is at least given some exposure. The POV here is entrenched and glaring. Dahn (talk) 06:45, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
I re-read the article. There's certainly not a 100/0 POV split, and Dahn is clearly relying on the idea that unflattering factual statements are negative opinions, when they are in fact encyclopedic content. Yes, the section on "defense of the policy" is weak, but that's because even the policy's enactors and advocates seem split on the issue. With regard to opinions: Trump himself called family separation "horrible" and Sessions said, "We don’t want to separate families, but we don’t want families to come to the border illegally. This is just the way the world works."([3]). Yet, the article offers opinions from Trump, Sessions, Nielsen defending the policy. A challenging issue for NPOV is that numerous reliable sources report such statements accompanied by clear fact-checks that undermine the proponents' factual claims; we dutifully included those facts. A policy that even its supporters claim is horrible, and (falsely, fwiw) blame their political opponents for "forcing" them to enact it, is going to look unsupported.--Carwil (talk) 14:12, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
For the fifth time, I haven'r asked for anything to be removed from the article, I have asked for the presentation of facts to be rephrased with the removal of weasel words (such as the absurd "tried to defend", which suggests that you can't defend Trump, and as such takes a stand), and I have asked for more sources to be added where there are several interpretations of the supposed facts. I haven't even suggested that other interpretations take precedence over Vox and the like, just that they be mentioned, for Christ. I haven't even suggested that there's any info in the article that is unencyclopedic, I have noted that the tone and the unilateralism are not encyclopedic -- and in fact the entire article is written in glaring indifference to our core policies about tone and style. I stand by that and there is nothing in the above replies to even contradict me on that, just dancing around the point. Dahn (talk) 18:58, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
  • As this nomination appears to have reached a stalemate, I'm requesting another uninvolved editor to take a look at this. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 20:28, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
    I came here having seen Narutolovehinata5's comment at WT:DYK. I am not seeing egregious violations of NPOV in terms of sourcing; the content of the article comes fairly close to most RS I have read, and my news sources are widely drawn. Anyone seeking to change position of the article needs to provide RS taking contrary positions: simply stating that contrary positions are being excluded is not good enough.
    That said, I would not pass this article in this state either. It is in need of a strict copy-edit. Examples of the problem include excessive use of the terms from the title ("policy" appears five times in the lead paragraph), messed-up timelines ("Judge Sabraw has set a status hearing for July 6"), use of jargon ("said ending "catch and release" was the second of his two priorities for immigration reform, after walling off Mexico", which is difficult to understand for anyone outside the US and many folks within it) and often fails WP:HONORIFIC (Obama, for instance, should be "US President Barack Obama" or "then-US President Barack Obama" at the first use, and "Obama" thereafter. The judges and other presidents likewise. This isn't the US news media, and their conventions don't apply: we're writing for a global audience). There are some language-related NPOV concerns: why is it necessary to say "Photos provided by Customs and Border Protection. Reporters were not allowed to take their own photos." in an image caption? Finally, and most seriously, it contains an inordinate amount of excess detail. It is at 77kb of readable prose; for perspective, that is the same size as our article on World War II, and is far in excess of the thumbrule at WP:TOOBIG.
    So, in short, I think further work needs to be done here. Also, some food for thought: if you're aim is to educate a reader about a policy you believe to be horrific, you're still going to be better off with a concise and neutrally written article. Heavy editorial voice and excess detail rarely convince anyone. Vanamonde (talk) 13:19, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the excellent review. I am one of the major editors and I pretty much agree with everything you say, but I'd like to defend the editors of this article to you and others. The reason that the article sprawls this way and that is that we didn't have all the facts at hand as we wrote the article. For example, we were weeks into the event when it was learned that there not only was no plan to return the children, in many cases both parents and children were told exactly that. Who would believe that? I certainly did not at first and a lot of copy went into an issue that eventually turned out to be factual. Another instance is the fact that the administration had begun their plan at least a year before they announced it, another surprise and one of many. As these things pop up it can be difficult to fit them into the existing article, at least for a very small group of editors who most likely are working on several other articles as well. I could go on and on but hopefully I've made my point. Although I'm sure you meant only to be helpful, your advice, "if you're aim is to educate a reader about a policy you believe to be horrific, you're still going to be better off with a concise and neutrally written article" is rather condescending. IMO the article in its present form pretty much represents other breaking news articles I've worked on and of course needs to be completely gone through - but this one has the added problem of sounding like tabloid-type sensationalism that needs to be guarded against without watering down the facts, which truly are horrific. Gandydancer (talk) 14:46, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

Let me clarify that my comment isn't a personal judgement of the editors of the article. I've written content on contemporary politics: I understand the challenges involved. My comments are directed purely at the content as it stands, because we can acknowledge the difficulty of writing about certain topics, but the content ultimately has to stand for itself. As to my final comment: again, it isn't a judgement of the editors, but a comment about language: it's easy to let personal outrage slip into your writing, but tabloid-like style also has the effect of watering down the facts, and I'm afraid that's happening in a few places here. Vanamonde (talk) 15:43, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply. I did not note the "tabloid-like" criticism in your review, though perhaps that is what you meant by "Heavy editorial voice"? Since your review will be helpful for anyone that attempts to improve the article, where do you find "heavy editorial voice"? Again, thanks for your help. Gandydancer (talk) 15:58, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
  • I insist: my comments were about the unilateralism of sources, and I have provided examples of where National Review, for instance, clearly contradicts parts of the narrative -- I ask for these views to be cited not because I agree with them, but because they exist, and are clearly relevant. The only reason why these are not cited is because they're published in conservative venues. (I also urge the people who wrote this lopsided article to take a glance at who authored them: they are virtually all by people who took a strong anti-Trump stance in 2016. This to address another canard.)
As another reviewer has noted, even beyond that sort of lopsidedness, the article is poorly written, and abounds in POV phrasing, editorializing, weasel words etc.
All the hooks proposed are questionable, and ALT0 is clearly unusable; the legend for the picture is downright propaganda.
You can ignore this, sure, and keep using wikipedia as a soapbox. But even so, you can't ignore another issue that I have brought up: the citation formats are messed up, in many cases they fail to identify the publisher.
The article does not belong on mainpage, not in its current state, and, thanks to the entrenched POV of its editors, which seeps into everything, not for a very long time. Dahn (talk) 08:21, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
  • As Dahn and Vanamonde93 have raised concerns about not just the tone of the article, but sourcing and writing concerns in general, this nomination is now marked for needing work. The nomination has been sitting for more than a month now, and the concerns are deep, so what I'll do is that I will give the primary contributors (@Carwil, Pharos, Gandydancer, and Volunteer Marek:) a week to address the issues. If they have not been addressed in a week, or either Dahn or Vanamonde93 have not lifted their objections, this nomination will be marked as failed. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 00:14, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
  • @Dahn and Vanamonde93: It has been one week since I left my last message, have your concerns been addressed? Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 01:22, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
  • @Narutolovehinata5: Barely. While claims were toned down, and weasel words mostly removed, the article still overrepresents one side of the controversy. The very notion of having "Support" and "Oppose" sections is inducing a POV (I distinctly remember that such sections were frowned upon by wikipedia), and even at it only minor adjustments were made to the "Support" section, such as adding David French's comments. The "facts" of the article, meanwhile, remain described largely through the likes of Vox and CNN, even where, as I have shown, other sources point out quite contrasting interpretations and facts that the article ignores (such as in describing Obama's policies on this issue). This looks like an attempt to simulate impartiality, rather than an actual effort. I see nothing done about the editorial comments such as the one informing us that reporters were not allowed to photograph. The problems in the hooks here are exactly the same as they were weeks ago. Dahn (talk) 06:23, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
  • @Narutolovehinata5: It remains a mixed bag. Gandydancer has done some good work on structuring, and the lead is now in better shape, but there haven't been many changes to the prose in the body since my previous comments, and the issues with detail remain. Now given how prominent a topic this has been, I would like to see this featured at DYK, but I don't have the time to work on this myself, and the other nominators need to show some interest in fixing the prose issues. I remain unconvinced that it has overall neutrality problems: as I said before, I read very widely, and this article represents virtually all of those sources. If there is a large section of equally reliable sources this article ignores, I have yet to see evidence of it. Vanamonde (talk) 07:33, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for your opinions. Yes, I did try to make the lead sound a little better but not much else. The article needs to be totally restructured and I'm not sure that enough time has passed for that to happen except perhaps by a skilled editor or editors with plenty of hours to spend on it, IMO. As is often the case, most of the editors that added copy no longer seem interested. This is typical in my experience and this is not the first time that I'm the only one left. Frankly, this was the strangest article I've ever worked on and I am one of the leading editors of the BP spill article that just kept getting worse and worse for months, the African Eboli epidemic where the WHO initially tried to cover it up, and the horrific Indian rape and murder of the young woman (a GA of mine). Sorry to sound so defensive but it is reasonable that I would respond to the amount of criticism that the editors of this article have received. One tries to not take things personally but it is hard to avoid at times. I will continue to try to improve the article but not for a DYK since I feel that there is far to much work needed for that. Gandydancer (talk) 14:09, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
It's rather unfortunate that the others aren't taking much of an interest. Volunteer Marek you nominated this; surely you want to see it through? Gandydancer has the right idea; the cleanup he did on the lead just needs to be applied to the rest of the article. Easier said than done, I know. Vanamonde (talk) 18:04, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
Have Danh's, um, "concerns", been addressed? I don't see a point in working on it if it's going to get shot down regardless.Volunteer Marek (talk) 05:02, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
@Volunteer Marek: No single volunteer's comments are binding here; indeed, I came here to offer a third opinion. I have yet to see evidence of an overall bias among the sources (as Dahn suggests there is) but as Dahn and I both agree that the prose could be improved with respect to neutrality, I would think that is an entirely genuine concern. If you addressed it, I would be willing to pass this. Vanamonde (talk) 17:42, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
  • @Volunteer Marek: Do you still wish to pursue this nomination? Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 00:48, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
  • There has been no response from the nominator to my question a few days ago, but they have mentioned above that they appear to be discouraged with continuing the nomination. In addition, another contributor has admitted that addressing the article concerns would be difficult to finish in a reasonable amount of time. Taking these into account, this nomination is now marked for closure. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 00:37, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
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