Talk:Scott Thomas Beauchamp controversy/Archive 9

message: What then are the reliable sources for this article?
* The New Republic which has been accused of perpetrating a journalistic hoax and recently gave an account of a conversation with STB which contradicted the leaked Army memos?  They are no longer independent of the controversy.  For the editors involved, their careers might be at stake.
* The United States Army which has been accused of investigating and punishing the soldiers who committed these atrocities.  Of course, they were never independent of the controversy.  The honor of the army is at stake.
* The citizen journalists and mil-bloggers who did the actual interviews on the ground in Iraq.  On the other hand, such self-published sources are deprecated by Wikipedia policy.
* Political comment and advocacy web sites (some supporting the Iraq War and some opposing the Iraq War) such as National Review Online
* Mainstream media such as the New York Times and Washington Post which have not attempted to investigate the original atrocity stories but have commented on the above sources as a matter of controversy.
I wrote in the Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scott Thomas Beauchamp controversy, there there was a dispute here over what were the reliable sources who didn't have their own stake in the controversy.  Someone there commented that such sources were available in spades. But User:Ronnotel wrote in the above sections that TNR and the Army are not independent from the controversy.  I note the two sources dispute each other in almost every significant fact. 
On one hand, it appear that this article is worthy of inclusion in the Wikipedia.
On the other hand, an article for which there are no reliable sources should and would be deleted.
What are those other reliable sources and what facts do they disclose that are not in dispute?  patsw 00:32, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Your most recent episode of using selective quoting to push your agenda (see above), and your stunt today of trying to have the entire article deleted, raises the question if any editors should take you seriously anymore.  I certainly don't.  --Eleemosynary 02:53, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Eleem, there's no need for that, Pat, read WP:POINT; please don't AfD articles which obviously aren't likely to be deleted for the sake of disputing WP's RS policy. Chris Cunningham 10:31, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reliable Sources and the abundance of facts not in dispute 

message: I'd like to expand on my and some other comments at the AFD:
whether the "original atrocity stories" have merit is wholly irrelevant to whether the controversy is notable.
 this is an article about the controversy - not about the truth or falsehood of the original allegations. They should document the controversy - who said what when - and let readers draw their own conclusions. Wikipedia cannot and should not try to determine which side is true. Editors can and should summarize the elements of the controversy.
whether the reports were a hoax or not, the story about them has become sufficiently well-known to deserve an article on Wikipedia.
I have been persuaded that even if there is no conclusive evidence to prove the original atrocities stories were true, or to prove them to be a hoax, the controversy has gone on long enough for it to be permanently cemented into the pages of history as notable.
A common element in all of these quotes is that there is a difference between the original atrocity stories and the controversy. You may not have enough sources about the atrocities themselves, but you have more than enough sources about the controversy - and your article is about the controversy, not about the alleged atrocities.
Let me draw an analogy with JFK (film), the controversial movie about the assassination of JFK. Some people are convinced that there was a conspiracy and official cover-up of the assassination. Other people believe that the conspiracy theories are hogwash and that the official explanation is the truth. The article about the JFK movie does not try to determine the truth or falsity of the various theories; it merely documents what is in the movie. In other words, the editors do not try to document the event that is at the core of the movie, they simply document the movie about the event.
Similarly, this article should not try to determine the truth or falsity of the allegations at the core of the controversy, it should simply document the controversy about the allegations. And you have more than enough sources about the controversy. The STB controversy occurred mostly in the blogosphere, but became large enough that it spilled out into the mainstream media. The media thus demonstrate that the controversy is notable. 
Don't try to document whether the original allegations are true or false. Instead document the controversy about the allegations. Tell us who said what when. Since most of the controversy occurred in blogs, you will have to quote blogs. While that would not be acceptable in an article about the alleged atrocities it is acceptable in an article about the controversy. The controversy is mostly about what was said in blogs, and blogs are a reliable source for what was said in blogs. The blogs do not provide facts about the allegations but they do provide facts about what was said to create the controversy.
Going back to the JFK movie, it is not a reliable source about the assassination of JFK, but it is a reliable source about the content of the movie. Similarly, the blogosphere is not a reliable source about the alleged atrocities, but it is a reliable source about the content of the controversy. A blog is a reliable source for what the blog itself said.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sbowers3 (talk • contribs) 23:42, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: "Document the controversy" is a bit close to teach the controversy to me. That's what I'm getting at. By failing to consider the facts of the issue itself in favour of ascribing encyclopedic value to the difference in opinion, one implies to the reader that the "controversy" is legitimate insofar as the factual evidence of the issue is in doubt. That, of course, was the whole point in that attacks on TNR in the first place. I think the controversy is important insofar as it may discuss how both mainstream and "new media" outlets investigate issues and obtain their sources, but that requires a total rethink of how the article is laid out. A he-said-she-said coverage of the issue may be useful for a tabloid magazine, but not an encyclopedia. Chris Cunningham 08:09, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Document the controversy, not the allegations 

message: Could we come to some agreement about how we're going to archive this page, please? Having an edit war about it (including such very silly comments as "removing important information", "vandalism", yadda yadda) aren't productive.
This is a fast-moving talk page. There are a few key editors involved in discussion, all of whom appear to be watching the talk page intently. The archived pages are prominently displayed. Pages should be archived as they get to a certain size or they both become difficult to read and difficult to handle on slow PCs / slow Internet connections. Happy to follow any consensus on size or age limits we might agree on in future. Chris Cunningham 08:09, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Your original archiving, which was reverted twice, was spot on.  The user who accused you of "hiding things" by properly archiving the page appears to have been acting out of petulance, perhaps because the huge image files he plastered on the page -- which could, and should be linked to -- were moved to the archive.  It is not Wikipedia policy to plaster image files on Talk pages (as a matter of fact, doing so is quite out of the ordinary); it is Wikipedia policy to archive Talk pages after they become unusually large, as this one has.  I'm fine with your restoring the archive. --Eleemosynary 09:55, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

text: Furthermore, when I clicked on "edit this page," here was the message: "This page is 86 kilobytes long. It may be helpful to move older discussion into an archive subpage."  --Eleemosynary 09:59, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  None of this is going to be resolved by name-calling. The editor in question is taking a 24-hour vacation for an unrelated edit war right now, so I can wait until then for his input, but if anyone else would like to comment I'm all eyes. Chris Cunningham 12:46, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I chalk this up to a misunderstanding.  The editor didn't like that such recent comments were archived (and made some inappropriate assumptions about this), while Chris seems okay with letting the de-archiving stand for now.  Attempts to fan the flames of this misunderstanding hopefully won't hinder a resolution based on a return to the assumption of good faith.  It might be good to just archive everything before "Documents" so that no recent conversations are included.  I've archived recent stuff before (maybe not here, but in general) for the purposes of shortening talk pages, but, since it's a bone of contention here, it's likely best to avoid doing so, and stick to archiving discussions that are weeks, not days or hours, old.  After all, after the archive recommendation ("It may be helpful to move older discussion into an archive subpage"), editors are directed to Help:Archiving_a_talk_page#Move_procedure, which explicitly states to make sure that active discussions remain on the original talk page.  It's easy to overlook this, so it's good this was brought up, though (like Chris) I'd rather it have been argued first here rather than through a revert war. Calbaer 17:45, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archiving 

message: The article should probably be completely rewritten due to  the recent article in which Franklin Foer declared that TNR no longer stood by Beauchamp's work.  I added to the intro and conclusion, but this piecewise article might be better served by someone who wants to do a rewrite and can be careful to keep a neutral point of view.  If no one else volunteers, I might do it. Calbaer 23:11, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not suggesting that facts be omitted.  But a narrative should differ if the results are known as they are.  Now that the parties involved are less fractured (although seemingly no less hostile), the article itself can be less fractured.  For the first time, this story seems resolved.  (It's also less likely we'll have edit wars with people saying, "Just because a few right wing bloggers allege some problems with the story doesn't make it false," since TNR no longer makes that a defensible position.) Calbaer 18:26, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rewrite due to ''TNR'' conclusion 

message: Fog of War by Franklin Foer:
— Steven Andrew Miller (talk) 22:55, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Didn't say they were "false", they're saying that they cannot stand by them. It's that whole "war distorts moral judgment" thing in action, including theirs. No retraction, no admission that the stories were false. htom 23:12, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: They are saying they can not stand by them, because they are false. You are parsing a distinction without a difference. — Steven Andrew Miller (talk) 00:07, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Of course it is an admission that the stories are false.  In what universe would a publisher not "stand behind" accounts which they knew to be true? patsw 05:02, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: They say 
 ...we cannot be confident that the events in his pieces occurred in exactly the manner that he described them.
 which to me says that they think that the stories are true, except in some exact details. htom 07:00, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: They already knew that one detail was wrong.  While it is wrong to strictly stay that Foer called the stories "false," they were admitted to be false in the same way that someone a court lets out of prison is "exonerated."  There is a technical difference that perhaps we should keep in mind for the article, and there's a difference in attitude that accounts for Foer's continued defensiveness and hostility, but it is untrue to say that Foer thinks the stories are true save some details.  To best resolve his cognitive dissonance, he's adopted a "no one can be sure what's true and what's false" attitude.  The effect, though, is that while Foer has little interest in saying, "This is true and that is false," the stories overall have been disowned by everyone involved.  TNR published them and they shouldn't have due to their veracity being questionable and unverified at best, or nil at worst.  The article here should be semantically unimpeachable, but should still make this much clear. Calbaer 18:26, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  TNR Concedes Beauchamp Stories are false 

message: On August 1, six days after the "skulls on their head in sector" meeting, the Army concluded its investigation. Two days later, a public affairs officer announced that Beauchamp's piece had been "refuted by members of his platoon and proven to be false." The Army didn't announce this to The New York Times or even The Weekly Standard, let alone in a public report.   It first gave the story of Beauchamp's supposed fraudulence to a former porn actor turned blogger named Matt Sanchez. Apparently, the Army wanted the matter to quietly fade away. Several days after Sanchez's scoop, the Standard reported, based on an anonymous military source, that Beauchamp had signed a statement admitting that all three of his pieces were "fabrications containing only 'a smidgen' of truth. "http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=51f6dc92-7f1d-4d5b-aebe-94668b7bfb32&p=10 Matt Sanchez 23:32, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed, and you should feel some pride in that, though of course, if incorporated into the article, we have to do so in an NPOV manner, something Foer, in citing you as a "porn actor turned blogger," fails to do in his own publication.  (Of course, he's not required to abide by Wikipedia's standards for his magazine, though one would think professionalism would temper his language somewhat.)  If you want to edit the article, make sure to just use relevant facts neutrally stated. Calbaer 23:36, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm still in Afghanistan working for worldnetdaily as a war correspondent and can't really make the edit, but it is funny to see how mean-spirited Foer is in trying to discredit me. I'll try to check up on this article in the upcoming days and weeks.  I will be writing a substantial article for the Weekly Standard on the matter, so I'll keep checking in.  Matt Sanchez 04:57, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Matt Sanchez Role Confirmed