Talk:Bowling for Columbine/Archive 2

message: The cartoon sequence in the movie, that purported to represent the history of the United States, was remarkably inaccurate in terms of describing socio-economic factors. It was not solely slavery that made the US "the richest country in the world"; in actual fact, it was the industrial growth of the non-slave Northern states that created the US's original economic growth in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This is not a right-wing POV criticism of Moore. It is a simple fact of history that the sequence was inaccurate. If no one raises any objections, I will go ahead and add this to the Criticisms section in the article. Walton monarchist89 12:23, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please read WP:VERIFY. AlistairMcMillan 19:00, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Go ahead, if you can provide sources that show that this is a conclusion supported by more than a tiny minority of economists. (I think it may be correct because without manufacturing, the US would be a 3rd world country). However this point is rather minor, so it doesn't warrant more than a sentence, in my view. --GunnarRene 19:53, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You've hit upon the precise problem there. I don't have a source to hand that quotes this interpretation. It's my own interpretation of the flaws in the sequence, based on established facts of economic history. I won't add the information until I can dig up some relevant sources. Walton monarchist89 11:08, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Cartoon Sequence

message: The gun-rights lobby believes that Moore unfairly portrayed lawful gun-owners in the USA as a violence-prone group. While few dispute that the gunshot homicide rate is higher in the US than in other countries, Richard Bushnell claims his statistics as presented in the montage of other countries sequence are ambiguous [8] on two counts: first, they maintain Moore's statistics are not adjusted for smaller population of other countries; second, Bushnell claims that most of the other countries' numbers do not include accidental deaths and shootings performed in self-defense, while the US figure does include these. 
The problem here is that the is a legal distinction between murder and homicide.  The former is the unlawful killing of another person, where is the latter is any killing of another person, lawful or no.  Legally, justifiable or excusable homicide (e.g., self-defense) is still homicide.  Note that Hardy's page cites US murder statistics to disproves Moore's claim, rather than US homicide statistics.  Since Moore is citing homicide statistics to begin with, his numbers would be accurate.  The references to how Moore's statistics include "accidental deaths" is non-sensical, since neither Bushnell nor Hardy even claim this, much less support it.
I would recomend adding a line that removes references to accidental death, and adding a line saying that they are confusing homicide statistics with murder statistics, and explaining the distinction.  I would also either remove the claim "other countries' numbers do not include," unles a disclaimor is added saying that this might be part of their original confusion.  I don't consider this original research, because this can be verified on their own pages, and neither of these sources are really authorative in themselves.  Schrodinger82 01:13, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Murder/Homicide 

message: As a start on getting the size down I removed the 'Canada' section because the points are unsourced (and also specious). DJ Clayworth 19:07, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Canada

message: Part of the unbalance could be corrected by writing a much longer summary of the movie and its main points. There would not then be the need to reduce the criticisms section so much. This issue is so extreme that many of Moore's points are only brought up in the Criticisms section.
I have started to write some more summary sections, but I'm handicappted by not having seen the movie for a number of years, so feel free to correct and expand on what I write. DJ Clayworth 19:23, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Uucp was talking about doing this.  I think he should, still. -Schrodinger82 19:55, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Somebody added an 'unbalanced' tag with the comment that "with the removal of 90% of the criticism section this article is now unbalanced". Well, that removal meant that the 'criticism' section now occupies only 50% of the article, which is a very strange definition of 'unbalanced'. I've removed the tag. DJ Clayworth 13:35, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Increasing the description length

message: First, I'd like to suggest a formal request for comments on this article to get more opinions.  Then I recommend removing footnote 14: Bushnell just doesn't meet Wikipedia's standard of a reliable source.  I'm uncertain about Kopel and Hardy.  Regarding my own potential biases: I'm a Navy war veteran who laughed out loud many times at this film (and watched it in my ship's gun mount). Durova 06:05, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hardy can be mentioned briefly solely on the fact that an anti-Moore book exists, and the fact that the book exists can be independently verified.  However, the claims themselves leaves much to be desired, such as the one where he's a criminal lawyer who apparently can't even disinguish between murder and homicide (The alternative is that he does understand the distinction, but is being dishonest for the sake of calling Moore a liar.).  But most of the comments are completely superfluous to the material, or are based on claims that Moore never actually makes.  -Schrodinger82 09:04, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Outside comments 

message: I don't think criticisms should be mixed in with the summary of the movie. The reader is then prevented from getting a simple summary of what the movie says. Most articles keep keep summaries of the viewpoints of an organisation separate from summaries of peolle who disagree with it. We should do the same. DJ Clayworth 20:54, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Unfortunately, one thing we saw is that some things were being repeated (e.g., the Lockheed-Martin case.).  The bank example also caused Moore to revise the movie in future edits, so I think it's relevant to the summary.  Perhaps we could just revise the order.  "He later added scenes where blah blah blah.  This may have been in response to a WSJ article, which stated..." -Schrodinger82 22:03, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

text: OK. My concern is that someone will use this as an execuse to put 'criticism' into every section of the summary, thus braking up the flow completely. DJ Clayworth 22:05, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Simple solution is to keep it brief, and make sure that current standards for RS still apply. -Schrodinger82 23:22, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Now see what happened! People are filling the 'summary' section with criticism, despite the fact that there is a criticism section! It's as though some editors can't bear to see a paragraph without a criticism of Michael Moore in it. I'm going to separate out the two again. DJ Clayworth 14:08, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

text: That's better! DJ Clayworth 15:43, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Organization