Talk:Richard Mellon Scaife

message: This article had become disorganized, with "giving" spread into two separated sections and biographical details mixed. I hope I've straightened it out by placing all the giving in one section at the end (though I'm not sure about the section title. I'm sure some of it came from his own pocket). I haven't deleted anything, and only copy-edited slightly. Cheers -Willmcw 07:50, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chronological order 

message: While there is evidence that Sciafe has conservative, right wing, and libertarian views, they are  not clearly defined (according to the conventional uses of the terms) nor are they fixed. For those reasons it might be better to avoid labelling him with one or another political epithet as his primary description. Later in the article we discuss his politics in some detail. -Willmcw 21:24, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
:I agree. This seems to be a better and more accurate approach.--Cberlet 12:33, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ideology 

message: This Scaife guy is one of the most dispicable human beings on the face of the earth. I wish I could smack him in the mouth after what he called that woman. Jack Cox 20:52, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Real Jerk 

message: Well, wouldn't that be what he "allegedly" called the woman? There doesn't seem to be any tape of the event and no outside corroboration it actually happened, except from the words of a freelance reporter who never really became a reporter.
Anyway, it's equally odd to find "Online Journal" and the Pittsburgh City Paper used to debunk narratives portrayed by respected mainstream publications, such as the Washington Post.
Although a supporter of the open source effort to produce an encyclopedia, methinks Wiki would be taken more seriously if contributors didn't so badly botch pieces about the various media (see CBS 60 Minutes) or the biographies of well known publishers.
Are there no "editors" in Wikipedia to police these sorts of things? Why isn't a crude, poorly written opinion piece by someone named "Chris Potter" (does he really exist?) at a tiny partisan press not discounted, when different versions of the same events from important news outlets carry the same weight?
Shouldn't there be a ranking of sources used to construct an article?  I would imagine a free, largely unread effort by some hack in Pittsburgh wouldn't have the substance of WAPO. But what do I know?
::This appears to be a relatively old comment about something no longer in the article, but I wanted to make a comment and say, yes, there really is a Chris Potter, and yes, he really does work for a legitimate newspaper called the Pittsburgh City Paper. Thanks. NickBurns 14:58, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Real HATCHET JOB 

message: Wow.  It's always ironic for those of us who actually are experts on important subjects to come into Wikipedia and see pure crap.  I'll make a few points:  His name is not "Mellon Scaife." It's just "Scaife."  He doesn't use "Mellon" as a working title for obvious reasons mentioned in this effort.
Second, doesn't anyone know who Rothmeyer is?  Last time I checked, she was an associate editor at The Nation.  Shouldn't the compilers of this page at least take that into consideration when producing this bio?  Or does source material matter?
True, it's a source that can be verified, but that doesn't make the source accurate or trustworthy.  The Nation is a wonderful publication, but it's a self-described partisan press.  I also would be careful of using, say, the Weekly Standard to dig up dirt on someone like Ted Kennedy.
An uncorroborated version of an account that has been publicly challenged should not be given carte blanche authenticity.  Who is this Gamaliel and why should we assume he knows anything about Scaife, publishing or American politics? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.5.119.226 (talk • contribs) 
The same reason we assume you do.  See Wikipedia:Assume good faith. Gamaliel 18:32, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  New to This 

message: I removed this blockquote:
*Where Scaife's Money Came From	 	
*: Richard Mellon Scaife's philanthropy has come from family trusts set up by his mother, four foundations and his own checkbook. The trusts expired in the 1980s. The tax law required Scaife to become a philanthropist. The foundations he inherited had to give away 5 percent of their assets every year. He can deduct the amount of each gift he makes from his taxable income, which – given the billion dollars or so in his personal fortune – is presumably substantial."
I removed it did not belong in the intro, because we should summarize the info rather than simply quoting it, and because it is not clear about who is making the gifts- only Scaife's gifts to charities are deductible, not the gifts by the charities. The information on his fortune and trusts should all be handled in one place. -Will Beback 23:07, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Money 

message: Revert attempts to embelish this incident. The guy was troubled. End of story. It has nothing to do with the subject of this article. skywriter 04:53, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have to agree. It'd be like devoting space to Oswald in the bio of JFK, only in this case the two never even saw each other. The Kangas article can cover the incident in detail. -Will Beback 08:07, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Kangas junk

message: Please defend the revert of the sublime edits of the Richard Mellon Scaife article. 
The he-said/she-said pissing match between Scaife and the reporter is meaningless without access to the four or five-part series in the Columbia Journalism Review, which put the encounter in perspective and which is no longer online-- and that was stated in the deletion, contrary to your claim that that part of the edit was not explained. The information about the reporter is flat out wrong, as she occasionally wrote more than 25 years ago for The Nation, and moved on to other publications. Why is that still there?
More specifically, what does the paragraph about that chance encounter tell us about the subject of the article that his life story, which I added awhile back, not tell us? His relationships with his family members are much more revealing about his character than a chance encounter with a reporter whose four or five-part series we can no longer read. But maybe then Wikipedia is trying to out-Enquirer the National Enquirer in the area of titilating readers by throwing the word "cunt" around. Great!
Explain exactly what using the nickname --Dick-- in the middle of the article accomplishes? Exactly why did you put that back in? Please point to other articles where the subjects of articles are not referred to strictly by their last name. Why the sudden informality?  
My edits made sense. Yours did not. Perhaps you will explain in detail what you did. Skywriter 06:57, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Anecdotes are legitimate material in biographies. We should not limit ourselves to only dry summaries. Life is a drama. This particular case is well-known. It illustrates Scaife's personality. The fact that a website is no longer operating does not mean that the event no longer happened. On the other hand, I don't know that we need to repeat the exact expletive that Scaife used. I don't object to censoring it for the children and instead saying that he used a "crude epithet", or similar description. By all means it should be handled in an NPOV manner. I also agree that the use of "Dick" mid article is odd. I'll go take care of that. Cheers, -Will Beback 07:46, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scaife 

message: This entry on Richard Mellon Scaife easily should prove one of the worst examples of "biography" found in Wikipedia:
*Substantial/major editing is needed.  
*Most material for a complete article needs to be added, and it certainly exists, in fair, objective prose, in the public domain. 
*This article isn't even good enough for a cleanup tag: it still needs to be built.
It suffers from non-POV descriptions and "facts" throughout.  
*Some errors are so blatant as to be laughable.  For example, several "editors" have taken a verbal slap at Marisol Bello, a reporter for the Detroit Free-Press.  The postings are so devoid of fact that they refer to Bello as a man ("Marisol" is a common, female name) and claim her "boss" is Scaife.  
*In fact, her "boss" is the Detroit Free-Press.
*The article itself in nearly complete devoid of fact throughout, relying mostly on Google searches of partisan websites and very lightly on respected publications such as the Washington Post or Newsweek.
*Wiki's "bosses" should get this right.  There's probably enough here that's libelous or simply false to trigger an immediate rewrite. Lionel of Pittsburgh (talk) 23:06, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Issues

message: I made some revisions to this article - I tried not to REMOVE much comment unless it looked decidedly POV. 
Tried to balance negatives and positives. I'm not a conservative, and I'm not a big fan of this guy, but for any bio we need NPOV, verifiable info, etc. And I think the best bios balance any criticism of a subject with a list of their accomplishments. 
I also added a little bit of lead information re: the paper, just to show a bit of the timeline of how it grew. I grew up in Greensburg, and my parents had the original Tribune-Review delivered to the door every day. It was a sleepy little paper, the kind where "editing" an article just meant you cut it off where you ran out of space. 1992 was the year of the big Pittsburgh paper strikes...but ironically, it was also the year, of course, that Clinton was elected. 
I think the guy's kinda fascinating, actually. And I know people who have worked for him that have had some very fascinating things to say about him. NickBurns 16:13, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Revisions 

message: I thought this article has a lot of information on Scaife if anyone wants to add some of it to the article. 
Remember 13:53, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Washington Post article on Scaife and his divorce proceedings 

message: I just stumbled upon this article and was surprised by its partisan tone. I'm tagging it because I believe that it is not written in a properly neutral fashion under WP:NPOV. I removed a passage that I believe clearly violates  WP:UNDUE. More attention needs to be paid to achieving a neutral and encyclopedic tone in writing this.--Samiharris 20:46, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: "Partisan tone" is clearly in the eye of the beholder.  There are bits that are suspect (and the one you removed was overt), but overall it's a fairly balanced article. rone 00:01, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The "Politics and philanthtropy" section is what concerned me. I could not find an NPOV section just to cover that section. Let me look again in the templates area.--Samiharris 14:40, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Lack of neutrality 

message: The Pittsburgh Post Gazette has uncovered some accidentially unsealed documents from Scaife's divorce, and has posted them online. Are these appropriate materials to cite? Even though they are supposed to be secret, they have been published by a respected news organization. Is this similar to the Pentagon papers--that once they're out in the public they're fair game?
  --RedShiftPA (talk) 02:09, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Divorce Proceedings Opened 

message: The references section is all mucked up. None of the articles listed are used for in-text citations. This does not comply with wikipedia standards. When in doubt, use the http://www.cnn.com to cite things. --RedShiftPA (talk) 06:01, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  References section 

message: anyone have Richard's email address? i would like to email him without going through people who will never pass the letter on. i doubt i will get a reply or any hlep but, no harm in me trying =) thanks in advance, Alan Scaife KaiQom (talk)  —Preceding undated comment was added at 15:07, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  contacting Scaife 

message: I just removed half of a paragraph that wildly accused Scaife, and pretty much the rest of his family, of being alcoholics. The "source" mentioned none of this. Someone needs to go through this article for other BLP problems, as I suspect there are more.--A. Gorilla (talk) 04:50, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The information that he was expelled from Yale is sourced to an article which doesn't appear to be in a reliable publication.  The author being "reliable" is not enough, per WP:BLPSPS.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 11:07, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: BLP issues

message: Much of what is listed under 'philanthropy', namely monetary support for POLITICAL organizations, is not philanthropy - it is political activism. I think these two should be split into separate sections. The way the article is formatted now implies that rightist political organizations are by their nature philanthropic, which is a slanted and un-encyclopedic way of dealing with this. A simple move of his support for these political groups to a separate category would fix the problem. 62.238.249.71 (talk) 10:28, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Improper (slanted) categorization 

message: Although the newspaper he previously founded endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2008, Scaife never did personally. More importantly, the endorsement was for the Democratic primary. At that time, many conservative organizations wanted to draw out the Barack Obama v. Hillary Clinton primary to increase inter-party tension and give the Republicans an edge in the general election. It seems someone added this in to make Hillary Clinton seem like she had a conservative backer when, in reality, he almost ended her husband's political career.Cat spasms (talk) 06:57, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed "Hillary Clinton" endorsement because he did not endorse Hillary Clinton... 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 3 external links on Richard Mellon Scaife. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100304025805/http://www.heritage.org/About/Departments/trustees.cfm to http://www.heritage.org/About/Departments/trustees.cfm
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070608130352/http://www.mediatransparency.org/scaifeaggregate.php to http://www.mediatransparency.org/scaifeaggregate.php
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20040404051254/http://www.salon.com/news/1998/04/07news.html to http://www.salon.com/news/1998/04/07news.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 16:40, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 9 external links on Richard Mellon Scaife. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090520072112/http://mediatransparency.org/funderprofile.php?funderID=3 to http://www.mediatransparency.org/funderprofile.php?funderID=3
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060219051641/http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/trib/regional/s_297308.html to http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/trib/regional/s_297308.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090722030033/http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/specialreports/10year/s_104854.html to http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/specialreports/10year/s_104854.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20050404123743/http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/business/s_295006.html to http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/business/s_295006.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20041028043822/http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/speakout/scaife.html to http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/speakout/scaife.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20050310051111/http://www.newsmeat.com/media_political_donations/Richard_Mellon_Scaife.php to http://www.newsmeat.com/media_political_donations/Richard_Mellon_Scaife.php
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090520072112/http://mediatransparency.org/funderprofile.php?funderID=3 to http://www.mediatransparency.org/funderprofile.php?funderID=3
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20041002070446/http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=2065 to http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=2065
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20051028015726/http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/prev/archives/newsarch/potter/2c01/2c72501.html to http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/prev/archives/newsarch/potter/2c01/2c72501.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 00:11, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Richard Mellon Scaife. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20050425101414/http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/speakout/ to http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/speakout
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 13:18, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: In 2005, Scaife was number 238 on the Forbes 400, with a personal fortune of $1.2 billion. By 2013, Scaife had dropped to number 371 on the listing, with a personal fortune of $1.4 billion.
I suggest the data point from 2005 be dropped from the lead, along with the cry-me-a-river "dropped" comparative that including this earlier data point seems to necessitate. — MaxEnt 19:40, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unintentionally hilarious