Talk:Al Gore/Archive 13

message: Just a general FYI that a related article to Al Gore, Al Gore controversies, is up for AfD at: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Al Gore controversies. Thanks. • Lawrence Cohen 19:22, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  FYI: [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Al Gore controversies]] 

message: The article says "Al Gore has appeared in south park", whereas in fact the character Al Gore has appeared in South Park, not Gore himself. But I am a lowly anon and cannot fix this. 199.71.183.2 18:24, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps the entire section is a case of undue weight? While it is important to note that analysts think Gore's willingness to poke fun at himself is part of re-inventing himself, is it really necessary to detail every appearance he has made in popular culture to do that?  The entire section could be trimmed down to a couple of sentences and integrated into another section without any loss of encyclopedic content and it would also eliminate (or at least decrease the impact of) the ManBearPig additions. --Bobblehead (rants) 21:46, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: this issue does keep coming up. i believe the section was artificially changed to "al gore appearances in popular culture" simply to preclude negative portrayals from being added. most other articles that have similar sections have simply 'xyz in popular culture'. but no matter how you slice it, it's ultimately trivia. gore appeared for less than one minute in an episode of '30 rock'. but this has adequate notability and weight to appear in his WP:BLP? i think not. we should either eliminate the section, or better, integrate it into the article in the context bobblehead noted - his 'reinvention' of his public perception. Anastrophe (talk) 21:52, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: So you want a trivia article with South Park and Simpsons references galore. Great solution. How about we just weed out the stuff that Al Gore didn't contribute to. Oh, it's already done. And you can take your accusations of bias and look into the mirror. Cheers. Turtlescrubber (talk) 22:49, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: please be civil. Anastrophe (talk) 23:03, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Turtlescrubber, what are you talking about? Seems like the idea I proposed and Anastrophe. supported would remove the useless references to all the cartoons his likeness has appeared in, whether or not he contributed to them. His appearances in Futurama are just as notable as his likeness being used in South Park, which is barely notable at all and not to the extent that they are covered in this article. The important part is that Gore has used his appearances to adjust the "stiff" caricature of him that developed during his presidential campaign. --Bobblehead (rants) 01:00, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Yes, sorry about my earlier confusion. I am fine with your suggestion. Turtlescrubber (talk) 05:56, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: i'm confused, you say you're fine with the suggestion, but then you did a wholesale revert on this and other changes that user happyme22 performed this afternoon, including some good quality housekeeping. can you explain? Anastrophe (talk) 05:20, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

text: You don't just create a trivia page out of thin air without consulting the other editors on this page. The trivia page created by happy was nothing like what bobblehead suggested and I said that I would be okay with. This was the arrangement, "integrate it into the article in the context bobblehead noted - his 'reinvention' of his public perception." Not creating a trivia article. As far as I know, this has nothing to do with the creation of a new trivia article.Turtlescrubber (talk) 05:23, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: "is it really necessary to detail every appearance he has made in popular culture to do that? The entire section could be trimmed down to a couple of sentences and integrated into another section without any loss of encyclopedic content and it would also eliminate (or at least decrease the impact of) the ManBearPig additions" Bobblehead's words. Turtlescrubber (talk) 05:27, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: okay, but you're also doing a wholesale revert on a lot of other edits. how about, rather than using the meat-axe approach, just do what you claim in your edit summary that you're doing - restore just that section, rather than wiping out many other good edits in the process? Anastrophe (talk) 05:29, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: thanks for the re-edit, appreciated. any thoughts on trimming some of the less notable/detailed mentions - such as the one liner pointing out that he appeared on 30 rock? i saw that episode, it was hilarious, but - well, i think the disinterested reader simply isn't going to get much out of knowing he appeared, all other things being equal. Anastrophe (talk) 05:44, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

text: I did what I claimed, I did restore the section. I did it twice. Turtlescrubber (talk) 05:45, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: So you asked happy to create the Al Gore trivia page? Wow, AGF indeed. Turtlescrubber (talk) 05:53, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: the first two times you made the edit, you did a wholesale revert, and culled a bunch of other (good quality, housekeeping) edits in the process. you did not simply restore just the section, not initially. after i pointed out (twice) that you were meat-axing other good edits, then you actually made the more refined edit - which is what i thanked you for. i did not ask happyme22 to create the al gore trivia page. happyme22 made a series of edits this afternoon. after it appeared he'd finished, i noticed that there wasn't any link to the page he'd created, leaving no path from this article to it. i suggested that he should add such a link.. i will again ask you to please be civil. flinging accusations of conspiracy, and distorting the edit record, do not further progress on the article.Anastrophe (talk) 06:14, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: South Park

message: To me, the major section called "Post Vice-presidency" contains a somewhat arbitrary collection of what has happened after 2004. The movie and the Nobel Prize also happened after Gore was no longer VP. Conversely, the subsections on the 2004 and 2008 elections might fit better within "Political career."  Therefore, I propose the following restructuring, which I hope will be seen as mainly painless by most contributors. 
*Change "Political career (1976-2000)" to just "Political career" (or perhaps "Government service")
*Move subsections on 2004 election and 2008 election into that Section 2. 
*Move "Education" into "Private citizen" and promote it (up a level). 
*Merge the election statistics now in "Electoral history" up into the relevant "Political career" prose. 
Any objections?  Hult041956 22:37, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds like a good plan to me. -Classicfilms (talk) 19:13, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hearing no objections, I went ahead and did the first three of these changes. You can see this took very little editing. Really just changed a few of the headers. The fourth item is a little more difficult, as the tabular data doesn't fit well into the relevant sections.  Hult041956 (talk) 00:51, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

text: Thanks, Classic. IMO, the "Today, Gore is..." paragraph is a nice, terse summary of his current involvements and activities; I think it belongs in the introduction. I agree with you that the "Private citizen" section is quite rough. It could use some fleshing out and some copyediting. (BTW, I promoted your comment to the left, as it starts a new discussion.. hope you don't mind.) Hult041956 (talk) 17:56, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not at all :-) Fair enough - maybe over time then the section will develop. Good work...-Classicfilms (talk) 18:32, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed slight restructuring 

message: Small note, but perhaps his Nobel should be mentioned in the opening paragraph?  I know it's busy there, but a quick scan of other Nobel winners all have it mentioned in their intro.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.18.111.227 (talk) 22:57, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Peace Prize? 

message: turtlescrubber, your definition of what the section should be is arbitrary. i've seen many variations on 'popular culture', and your specific limitation that only actual appearances by mr. gore are to be considered 'within popular culture' is not supportable. i see the section that is repeatedly being added as no different from the others. it's a popular cultural reference. perhaps the problem you have with it is that it is ostensibly a negative portrayal of mr. gore? i've never seen it, so i don't know how 'acid' the depiction is, but from the description it is a non-laudatory representation. "Al Gore in popular culture" would fit with how other articles treat the matter. I'm not familiar with any other articles that specifically restrict popular cultural references to only those where the bio subject actually plays a part in them. again, it's an arbitrary restriction, and one which i believe you were the first to put in place (without discussion, i might add). Anastrophe (talk) 00:21, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: following up on myself here: all of the existing appearances fall easily in the category of trivia, no more or less so than the reference that's been repeatedly added. why don't we just toss the whole section? Anastrophe (talk) 00:24, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I do agree that as the section stands, it is now a list of trivia. I suspect, however, that even if the section is removed, part of the information will be added again at a later date. Thus, I would like to propose that we move the material to a new article rather than delete it. I cannot find Wikipedia guidelines concerning popular culture references, but there are a few existing articles that might serve as models for a new article. Here are a few examples: Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc, List of artistic depictions of Mahatma Gandhi, and List of artistic depictions of Beowulf. -Classicfilms (talk) 01:02, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, the section is a list of trivia. I was never in favor of this section because these types of sections becoming dumping grounds for irrelevant trivia. I thought that by at least giving it some standards, i.e. criteria for inclusion, then it wouldn't become the complete shit that these sections are in other articles. Some people would want every family guy, simpsons and south park reference to be put in this section. Yeah, that's encyclopedic. Futurama is okay because he lent his voice to that and has done so on numerous occasions. The editors adding this south park to this section generally  tend to be anons or users with less than ten edits who don't really care about quality standards. Every once in awhile we get a pov pusher. Regardless, this section, if it's going to exist, needs some sort of standards. If not, then it is purely trivia and should be handled as such. Maybe we should keep futurama and kill the rest. Or maybe we should just kill the whole thing.  Turtlescrubber (talk) 03:02, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  popular culture