Talk:Bruce C. Harris

message: This article needs to properly acknowledge the beginning, rise and eventual fall of Bruce Harris. His achievements are thrown into sharp relief by his personal weaknesses that eventually led to his departure from child protection. The issue was not his sexuality but that he had presented delibrately as a "family values" proponent and the inappropriate power relationship that he had with the young man who he paid for sex.
The issue was his disgusting and hypocritical behaviour, believing he coulkd criticize others with much higher moral values than himself. He is Scottish so I have changed the spelling to UK English. I have also tried removing some of the POV. His outrageous accusations against Central America and its people and culture, during his tenure at casa Alianza should indeed be expanded upon. This is the man who wanted to bankrupt the Guatemalan government, no guessing who would suffer were he to have achieved his lamentable goal. His fat wage packet (typical charity corruption that does so much harm to CA should also be mentioned. El Rojo 01:09, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You clearly dislike the man, and that's fine.  However, you need to keep your personal opinions out of the article.  You can report the facts, and the statements of others, but don't add interpretation of your own. That's what Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy means.  Superm401 - Talk 22:21, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I dont know Mr Harris, all I did was to reflect currently held beliefs around him. You'll find its Central Americans who hated him for his provocative statements (lets bankrupt Guatemala, etc) and that was before he proved himself a hypocrite by paying for sex with one of his boys. Someone who callas for the bankrupting of a state as a serious propostion is probabl;y very disturbed, and in this case that appears to be the truth. El Rojo 00:44, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Rise and fall

message: :::I would like to request other experienced editors of biographical articles to weigh in on this dispute. Nightngle (talk) 20:22, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: This is all just your opinion and I question its relevance here. he got paid a vast fortune to attack already weakened Central American institutions while having sex for money with the very people he claimed to help who wont have wanted sex with him but will ahgve wanted some of the endleess dollars he earned each week. Thank God Casa Alianza has gone back to its role of rehabilitating children rather than being an organization for the political agitation of Bruce Harris. As an encyclopedia we are duty bound to present both viewpoints, ie the CA viewpoint of him as a scoundrel as well as the view that he was a fallen Angel who somehow did some good. Thanks, ♫ SqueakBox talk contribs 14:54, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see this article as being neutral at all, nor presenting both sides of anything. The first statement is not that the charges against Bruce were "alleged", but rather that he was "disgraced". Hardly neutral. While I do feel that this article should be marked for not showing a NPOV, I won't be working on the article since I knew Bruce and have a positive bias in his favor. I find the statements from those who would forbid anything positive to be written about Bruce to be hyperbolic and highly opinionated, having convicted him when a court did not. Nightngle (talk) 20:10, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Personally I think if you want to add material that shows him in a positive light you should do so. Before 2004 he clearly had his supporters & I am sure positive stuff can be sourced from then in order to satisfy neutrality concerns, including sourcing some of the unsourced material I removed. I think disgraced is appropriate given what happened in 2004 and how this contradicted what he had claimed to stand for till that point. Thanks, ♫ SqueakBox talk contribs 19:50, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I have to say, this is troubling. A 19-year-old person is not a child, is not even a minor. So Harris had sex with another man, so what? Lots of people do that. So he paid for it, so what? Lots of people do that. While obviously the incident needs to be addressed in the article body, I don't see at all the need for the term "disgraced" in the article lede. Also what is the deal with "Harris was paid $129,000 a year for his work for Casa Alianza" in the article lede. Salaries are not usually mentioned in biographies, is there some significance to this amount that I don't understand? Is it unusually high or unusually low or something for someone in his post? I know exactly zero about this person, but this article is mess. There is no context and doesn't give me much idea of what the man actually did. We need to have a main body that describes his work in a neutral manner before we get into sections on "Disputes with Central American governments" and "Sex scandal accusations". Herostratus (talk) 07:44, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Herostratus. This article has a very nasty whiff of a hatchet job about it (by the way, we don't even have a reliable source for the $129,000 salary figure), and "disgraced" certainly doesn't belong in the lead (not on the evidence we have, anyway). This article needs someone willing to spend the time to find, and read, reliable sources on Bruce Harris, and re-write the whole thing in a neutral fashion. --NSH001 (talk) 12:54, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

text: The salary was extremely, unbelievably high for a country like Honduras where the minimum wage was $150 a month at the time, and given he was a "charity" worker. Harris was a very controversial figure with his detractors and his supporters. He then sullied his reputation meaning that there is very little positive available currently said about him. If he wasn't disgraced I cant think of anyone who was, he was about as disgraced a public figure as has ever existed. It seems that neither of you are very well informed about Central America (do correct me if I am wrong) but this article certainly reflects how he has been seen here since his fall from grace. But I look forward to you adding more positive material about him, well sourced of course. Thanks, ♫ SqueakBox talk contribs 22:56, 3 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, his salary would be compared, not to the average salary of a Honduran, but to a typical salary of a director of an aid agency in a country. Most such people have advanced degrees, special skills, or special experience, so they get paid professional-level salaries. What is the salary of (say) the director of Doctors w/o Borders in Haiti, or the director Oxfam in Bangladesh, etc. etc. I have no ides, but these are the types of salaries to which his would be rightfully compared, I guess. As to the other, from what I can see from the article and other sources (again, never having heard of this person before) it looks like he was was unpopular mainly with corrupt Central American government officials (of which there are surely many) rather than with regular people. IIRC correctly, for instance, the governments of both Guatamala and Honduras have been noted, at least at times in recent times, for being corrupt, evil, and terroristic quasi-Fascist military oligarchies. A person who was hated by these governments would be, in the minds of most reasonable people, more probably heroic rather than controversial. He's dead, so you can speak freely: what am I missing? Herostratus (talk) 02:06, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

text: I think you should be careful before calling Central American officials corrupt, remember BLP, and assuming these views werent held by regular central American people is quite possibly plain wrong, and I would argue so, so I think your argument, ie that these democratic countries are evil, is so poor that it doesn't rate inclusion or even a response, and certainyl doesnt help justify a POV tage. Thanks, ♫ SqueakBox talk contribs 22:19, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bruce Harris 

message: Just a heads-up that two of the cited links are reported as malware by Google, Avast! and Avira antivirus. These are no joke, and really are attempts to attack browsers and infect machines. IMHO Wikipedia editors should act (within reason) to answer obvious threats. In some cases, it's incredibly easy: the 1997 cite is available at archive.org (safe copy). The 2010 obit is NOT safe, and no safe archive is available, so I delinked it. Another source would be good to find, to support any claims left unsupported. I left links in place to the Google reports about the sites.  --Lexein (talk) 18:08, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: So what. If they are malware according to wikipedia that would be a different matter but we do not allow google or other 3rd parties to define what we do or do not use on wikipedia. Thanks, ♫ SqueakBox talk contribs 15:24, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: We have no reason to link to sites that are going to infect our readers computers. Active Banana   ( bananaphone 15:27, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: You have no evidence to back up your claim. If you want to get the link banned there is proper procedure. We do not allow google to dictate what is malware on this site (if you think differentlty dont forget to link to the relevant policy or guideline). Thanks, ♫ SqueakBox talk contribs 15:31, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Content must be verifiable as having been published in a reliable source, but there is NO requirement that we link to a source. And if linking to a source is bad for our readers, we shouldnt. Active Banana   ( bananaphone 15:44, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur in general. It is sufficient to cite the source without using a url. I would like to leave the url in the citation but commented out, so we have a record of same, but don't lead users to the slaughterhouse. --Nuujinn (talk) 17:10, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: That sounds like a good idea. Active Banana   ( bananaphone 18:04, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  2 malware links 

message: This is a vote, directly calling on the most interested editors' talk pages, based on article edit history. I prefer cites in
vertical 
format 
to ease editing and addition of prose and cites, since this seems to be a relatively active article.  There was no opposition in Talk or in edit comments.  Which way do people want citations, vertical or compacted ? Vote & concisely discuss below. Tallied on September 8, 2010. I will abide by the consensus. --Lexein (talk) 05:01, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation format 

message: I have tweaked the article which is, now I have tweaked it, looking like a neutral article; well done those who actually edited rather than sniping from the sidelines. Thanks, ♫ SqueakBox talk contribs 22:41, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, I think you pushed it a bit too far in the direction of making it negative again. Although most of the edits seem fine, you're removed some source material that is positive. --Nuujinn (talk) 11:04, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Removed no. I moved some sourced material from the opening cos I dont think we should have material of the "this website states..." in the opening but the material is very much still in the article, I just checked the diff. Thanks, ♫ SqueakBox talk contribs 13:48, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sorry, you're absolutely correct, I misread the diffs. Please accept my apologies! --Nuujinn (talk) 00:02, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Tweaks

message: The prior revision of the lead paragraph asserted that Harris made a specific admission; that assertion is not supported by the two cited sources. The sources both assert accusations, but no direct admission by Harris, or conviction.  The organization stating he made an admission is NOT the same as Harris making an admission - it's hearsay.  Further, the organization states he admitted only "acting improperly"; no mention of anything about sex or money.  We can quite legitimately state that the accusation was made, and that he resigned.  The letter of the sources rule here. --Lexein (talk) 22:27, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: OK I have rewritten the passage to use phrases lifted directly from the sources, OK? BTW I have no idea who Harris is and it doesn't sound like his actions were all that terrible, granted that it would require firing and investigation (which found nothing, I gather). We are all human especially when it comes to sex and the whole thing is too bad. I'm not sure that half the lead needs to consist of this incident, although it should be mentioned. That being said, it's not credible to maintain that the impropriety for which he was fired was not the incident with the 19-year-old man, nor that he didn't actually do it. "We are all human and I regret my actions" is effectively an admission (not even considering that Casa Aliente said he admitted it to them, and there's no reason for them lie about that and plenty reason (libel etc.) not to.) Herostratus (talk) 23:55, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Given that the entire incident is detailed representatively, and fairly (IMO) later on, the lead should be left at the bare minimum to summarize the whole article, per WP:MOSLEAD.  So, left office (doesn't have to say fired or resigned) after allegations(doesn't have to go into admissions, who said what, investigation or dropped). In my opinion. --Lexein (talk) 10:32, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Accurately citing sources 

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thread_title:  External links modified