MaineRenegade

Thanks for putting a county map on the Maine Gubernatorial Election!-spongebob1999

Recent edit to Howie Carr

Hello, and thank you for your recent contribution. I appreciate the effort you made for our project, but unfortunately I had to undo your edit because I believe the article was better before you made that change. Feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions. Thank you! Amortias (T)(C) 20:48, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Maine People's Alliance

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Speedy deletion nomination of Maine People's Alliance

Hello MaineRenegade,

I wanted to let you know that I just tagged Maine People's Alliance for deletion, because it seems to be copied from another source.

If you feel that the article shouldn't be deleted and want more time to rewrite it in your own words, you can contest this deletion, but please don't remove the speedy deletion tag from the top.

You can leave a note on my talk page if you have questions. LowLevel73^(talk) 04:06, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

2018

What is your source for Sen. Katz and Speaker Eves as possible candidates? --331dot (talk) 00:15, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Recent edits to Fred Malek

Hello MaineRenegade,

On October 15th you made an edit on the Fred Malek page that needs an explanation. You altered a direct quote in such a way as to completely change the meaning and tone of the quote, it did not make it clearer or easier to understand. As can be clearly seen in the revision log https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fred_Malek&diff=864098905&oldid=863369683 you altered the direct quote "take the lead in the program to politicize Departments and Agencies" and to "supervise the patronage operation and closely monitor the grantmanship operation.” to instead read "take the lead in the program to cause departments and agencies to be more responsive to the president's political priorities.” Any editing of a direct quote would be highly problematic, however editing it to favor a political bias and distort history is beyond the pale. I ask you to refrain from making political and dishonest edits in the future. Now I need to know, what is your explanation for this vandalism?

Sincerely Horse Eye Jack — Preceding unsigned comment added by Horse Eye Jack (talk • contribs) 16:38, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

I think you need to relax a little bit. I've been watching your edits of the page, and it is pretty clear from your aggressive attitude about this subject and your insistence at reinserting as much negative material as possible that you are not a neutral actor in this page's editing history. Indeed, I suspect you and people like you are the core issue that I was seeking to remedy in many of my edits -- namely an over-emphasis on negativity that goes far beyond the gravity and noteworthiness of the cited incidents, while essentially minimizing the other parts of his career and life. I have absolutely no connection with or affinity for Malek, outside being a politically engaged conservative that knows who he is and finds his career interesting.

Regarding the quote you refer to, that was pretty obviously (if you bothered to look at the edit) a simple mistake on my part. I was editing thousands of words on the article, re-arranging entire sections to more rationally organize the page, and adding to the page while recharacterizing some things into more neutral language. What I had intended to do was actually remove the quote entirely, and change the sentence to characterize the memo in descriptive terms, and I simply accidentally left in the "open quote" quotation mark at the beginning of that sentence. You can see this is my intention by the lack of a "close quote" at the end of the sentence. The quote was supposed to be gone.

Why? I've never particularly liked reading articles that contain an avalanche of quotes that are inserted into it. The source of those quotes should be talked about, and what they were talking about should be talked about, but cutting and pasting dozens of quotes into an article makes it look like hot garbage, and also makes it read more like a journalistic article, rather than an encyclopedic entry on a living subject. Yes, sometimes they are called for, but I try to limit them in the articles I work on none the less, which is nothing more than a style choice, and there is nothing inappropriate or "vandalism" about that in the least.

If you want to quibble about that characterization of the memo that I wrote, fine. That's entirely within bounds and called for, and I might even be happy to change it or edit it to be more "consensus" with you or other editors. I think pointing that quibble to me so we could talk about it and perhaps come to an agreement on wording would have been a far better choice, rather than the accusatory, arrogant and rather snottish attitude you are approaching me with now.

You don't "need to ask" about it, as though you are somehow "in charge" of this article, nor do I owe you an explanation. This is Wikipedia, and we are all (you included) trying to improve the quality and depth of the articles we participate in. I've been doing this a long time, and while I don't edit all that much anymore, you can see from my edit history that my interest in politics is hardly new, and that my edits are all in good faith, honor Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and none of them are perverted by my own bias. Hell, I even started an article on a progressive political organization here in Maine and was very positive/neutral in my writing of that article. I don't take accusations about my integrity as an editor very kindly.

Short answer: it was a simple, minor mistake and it certainly isn't vandalism. More importantly, I did a lot of very good work on this article to make it better and at absolutely no time during that editing process did I attempt to delete negative information or give a misleading impression of the subject. It was my feeling that it failed to meet Wikipedia:Neutral point of view standards, due to its overly negative (note the difference in my mind between negative and overly negative) tenor, so the entire focus of my edits were to try to make it more encyclopedic. I didn't take out references to "jew counting," nor did I take out references to several of the bad things Malek has been known for. These have clear notability, and they are a part of who the subject is and there is no questioning that. The issue I had with the article is that it appeared to me (and I think I'm right about it) that an editor, or several editors, who do not like Malek found his article and decided to dump an avalanche of negativity all over it, to leave the reader with a predominantly negative impression of him. Thus the extraneous quotes, often times having little to do with Malek at all. Thus the inappropriate characterization of some of the material. Thus the disproportionate length of the negative material, and so on.

At no time did I hide any of that. None. And I frankly am offended at the accusation, and the way you are approaching me about it. I edited it in good faith, and accidentally left a quotation mark in. You have since attempted to undo basically all of the work I did on the article because, it seems, you don't like the subject and you feel he "deserves" to have the negative POV associated with him. I have no interest in an edit war, but you aren't editing in good faith. I'd really have preferred to work together on the article to improve it, and certainly would have done so if I had actually been approached respectfully.MaineRenegade (talk) 15:47, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

If you check the other messages on your page you will find that the page you made, Maine People's Alliance, has been deleted because you plagiarized/copied it (also it seems I'm not the first to roll back your unhelpful/damaging edits, editors have apparently been doing so since at least 2014). If plagiarizing/copying is your idea of "very positive/neutral” editing thats fine but most people would call it bad faith editing. A neutral point of view does not mean that there is an equal number of positive and negative information, it means that all information whether positive, negative, or inconsequential is evaluated on the same grounds and without bias. Therefore any argument centered on the "disproportionate length of the negative material” that does not question the validity of the sources is invalid (and if that was actually your concern would be remedied by adding more appropriately sourced materiel, not deleting what you considered to be negative...). All of the information you wholesale deleted (besides perhaps the part about killing and roasting a dog, thats questionable even if its been covered by multiple papers of record) was all extremely well sourced and you didn’t just edit it down... You sanitized it to the point where it eroded the article's ability to indicate the relative prominence of opposing views (at the very least), I’m not going to claim I’m an expert but it seems that at least a bare majority of people view Fred Malek as a less than savory figure for some rather understandable reasons.

As for the political bias you accuse me of I only know of Malek because he engaged in a thoroughly bipartisan (the Democrat was the former Majority Leader of the CT State Senate and the Republican was the then Treasurer) scheme to defraud the Connecticut state pension fund, it was one of the most significant financial crimes in the history of Connecticut (for the record I have no personal relationship with the pension fund and wasn’t exactly old enough to be associating with titans of politics and industry in the 90’s and early 2000’s). I wasn’t editing Malek’s page because he’s a conservative (I could care less, yesterday I rolled back a similar sanitization of the page of current CT Majority Leader Joe Aresimowicz who is so left his day job is union organizer) I was editing it because he’s a white collar criminal...

You claim I think Malek “deserves" the “negative POV” but the SEC filings speak for themselves, a completely neutral description as provided by the SEC (a famously neutral organization) of Fred Malek is “Fraudster” whether you want to accept that or not... But by all means continue to blame any and all negative characterization of Malek on "you and people like you”

Horse Eye Jack (talk) 18:54, 9 January 2019 (UTC)