Talk:George W. Bush/Archive 39

message: The last sentence of the "Economy" section contains this statement:
"Currently under Bush, the economy grew at a 4.3 percent pace in the third quarter of 2005, the best showing in more than a year."
If Wikipedia wants to maintain up-to-date quarterly economic data, then this sentence should be changed to:
"Currently under Bush, the economy grew at a 1.1 percent pace in the fourth quarter of 2005, the worst showing in more than three years."
Reference:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060127/bs_nm/economy_gdp_dc
Personally, I think that selectively choosing current data could lead to POV problems. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.163.99.9 (talk • contribs) .
*Then why do you want to report selectivlt distorted economic data? Could it be that you are looking for any pathetic excuse to claim that we have a "bad" economy, and that a little socialism will make it all better? Sorry pal, Clinton's "good" economy is what got us into a recession, and Bush's leadership is what got us back on track.  If you try an insert any of that blatent leftist propaganda into the article, I'll see that you're permabanned so fast that your head spins--64.12.117.13 15:57, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  update the economic data? 

message: um, why is there a.. 
..tag on this article? GWB is a disambiguation page, not a redirect--205.188.116.138 16:27, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Because if you were trying, for example, to get to the article on the George Washington Bridge, and hence typed in GWB into the search bar, you'd be taken here, but you wanted to get there.  So we link to the disambig page, which is where he was trying to get to.  Perhaps GWB shouldn't automatically redirect here after all, but that's another argument. Since it does redirect here, and there are other usages of that TLA (three letter acronym), we need to link to the disambig. Fieari 17:17, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: but that's another argument - see Talk:GWB#Should GWB go to a disambiguation page, or should it go directly to George W. Bush?. Thanks/wangi 17:29, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Done. Shanes 15:29, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for that/wangi 15:42, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: GWB

message: I have problems with this article (George Bush) being considered a good article. Are the other presidents just as good? or is this a bias in support of George W. Bush?
MagnumSerpentine 05:05 4 February 2006 (US-CST)
I'm all for freedom of speech...but why not lock this page out to anyone but admins?  It seems that since even registered users are vandalizing the bio, its the next logical step.  Thoughts?
Squiggyfm 18:57, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not about freedom of speech, see WP:NOT; it is about building a comprehensive encyclopedia. Permaprotecting this page would be equivalent to labeling it 1.0, which is stupid especially given that he's still in office for another 3 years. —WAvegetarian•CONTRIBUTIONSTALK• EMAIL•19:19, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

text: *Ok fine, so it still gets occasional vandalism, it's hardly a good enough reason to go for full protection, hell, it's barely even enough of a justification to keep it sprotected--152.163.100.74 22:15, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

text: No. Just because an article is one of the most vandalised pages on Wikipedia does not mean that it should be protected; how would progress be made on the article? Isn't this a Wiki? Administratorship is not supposed to be a greater editing priviledge, and protecting it would turn it into that. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 23:04, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Moreover, Bush is President, Kerry is not... I would expect the sitting U.S. President's page to be more vandalized than a U.S. presidential candidate. Why does that surprise? -- User:RyanFreisling @ 23:06, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not to mention the fact that not every vandalous edit is negative. A vandalous edit could just as likely say "George W. Bush smells good" as "George W. Bush smells like poop." · Katefan0(scribble)/poll 23:15, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

text: *For months somebody kept trying to insert the text from his whitehouse biography, does that count?--205.188.116.138 01:32, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *Not to mention all the vandal-spoofers, who kept blanking the article with edit summaries like "FUCK BUSH, IMA JOBLESS HIPPIE ADICTED TO CRACK"--205.188.116.138 01:33, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *Not to mention, the John Kerry article used to get vandalized all the time, the only difference is that no one bothered to revert it, so it would sit vandalized for weeks at a time--205.188.116.138 01:35, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Lock out

message: Why is Bush on the category list for Razzie Awards (which are given to the worst actors in bad movies?) This seems childish, but I don't know it could be for something legitimate. WikiSailor 04:38, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Incidentally, he also won a top screen villain award for his role in that film from the British periodical Total Film Magazine.  However, not worth adding to the entry IMO Schizombie 05:24, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Everyone's a critic. :) -- User:RyanFreisling @ 05:27, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Razzie Award 

message: I read: "George W. Bush has been listed as a good article; it adheres to certain quality standards, and may become a featured article."
Hmm... If this articles does become featured and linked from the front page, I think that on that say it may be wise to make it editable by admins only... or at least, semi-protected (I notice that the sprotect comes and goes) If not, the vandalism would go through the roof. Admins: please make this a consideration if it does become featured... thanks. EuroSong  19:38, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: articles linked from the main page are not supposed to be protected. That's what in says in WP:PP.--Alhutch 19:40, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Featured article candidate? 

message: I note that instead of discussing semiprotection, a lot of the argument is pretty much personal attacks.  I'm not concerned so much about it because the target is me and I'm capable of absorbing any amount of that nonsense without taking it seriously.  However, it does damage the atmosphere, and it also wastes energy because you end up discussing personalities instead of arguments.  So please, let's tone it down a bit. --Tony Sidaway 12:19, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fully concur here. To echo Jimbo's words, we need to be extremely civil when discussing controversial topics and strive to assume good faith to everybody. I've been bothered about several discussions degenerating into somewhat incivil arguments, so let's try and act professionally here. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 15:11, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And for my part in this, if I have said anything to offend anyone, I am sorry. It was late, and I am prone to making small errors when sleep-deprived. Again, I apologise. --LV (Dark Mark) 17:02, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Civility

message: This article has been getting a lot of vandalism all of a sudden - why, as far as I know, GWB has not done anything out of the ordinary. --Latinus (talk (el:)) 14:00, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism - why? 

message: I see that lately there has been a string of people formatting and reformatting dates, and reverting each other over it. Could we perhaps have a discussion on here about this? Or has it died away forever? All or most of the people involved seemed like reasonable, responsible wikipedians who just happened to disagree, so it would be nice to work out what's going on. I would add, re one of the edit comments, that while there are differences in US and British readings of dates in 06.07.05 format, and these lead to confusion, everyone reads 2005-07-06 the same way, although it is non-standard in English-speaking countries (as far as I know). And nobody is confused by "6th July", "7th June" either. Skittle 14:56, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would disagree with you. I feel it is like British English and American English. Since this article is about an American subject, I'd stick with the American's date formatting. Not everybody reads the "standard" dates the same way, hence the reason for all the reverting. --LV (Dark Mark) 15:22, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Well, either way, I am inclined to keep the dates spelled out the traditional American way. --LV (Dark Mark) 16:07, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Note that the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) says "Do not use numbers to express a month, except in full ISO 8601 format" - that would seem to prohibit dates like 06.07.05 - Hayne 16:23, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Right, but that's not what the discussion is about. It is about dates being in the ISO format. --LV (Dark Mark) 16:56, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Dates

message: I've heard rumors that Bush has dyslexia. Maybe it could be mentioned in the article?--65.167.69.156 02:30, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Rumors about Dyslexia

message: My goodness!  This article seems to be always semi-protected.  What's the point in blocking anonymous users from editing?  Most anonymous users would fix a mistake when they see one, but will likely ignore it if they can't fix it.  Who cares if a lot of vandalism is going on?  Good-faith editors still outnumber the bad-faith ones.  We can revert vandalism whenever we see it.  Bowlhover 15:52, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It has been suggested, and from time to time, the article is unprotected. Nevertheless, this article is currently under somewhat permanent semi-protection, as it seems to draw in an exorbitant number of vandals. The number of vandals makes it difficult to block the vandals, and the amount of vandalism makes the article quite unstable. Most readers would have no way of knowing whether the version they were looking at had been vandalised. -- Ec5618 15:59, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The other thing, Bowlhover, is that you haven't been around when the article has been unprotected. It's much more vandalism than you probably realize. Before semi protection, it was typical for us to revert 20-25 vandalism edits an *hour*. Not a day. Not a half day. An hour. This article was the main inspiration for semi protection to begin with. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 16:20, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Just a snapshot. On December 20th, 2005 (and this wasn't close to one of our bad days), this article had over 200 edits made to it and at least half was vandalism. Someone figured out that the article was in a vandalized state for over 2 hours every day. That's why it's SP so much. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 16:24, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is exactly the point I was trying to make.  Half of the edits were vandalism, yet the article was in a vandalised state for much less than 12 hours a day.  Also, most users would know what vandalism is--the most common form is easily identifiable.  Who can't distinguish between obscene language and factual information?  Bowlhover 18:35, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not always that simple. I've seen users add information that is hard to disprove into an article as vandalism in quite a subtle way. Deskana (talk) 18:38, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism and semi-protection 

message: Bush attends services at St. John's Church (Episcopal) on a semi-regular basis
Doesn't he go to church almost every week? That seems like a regular basis to me.--Hbutterfly 05:32, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As President, I'd favor a guess that he is often unable to attend that specific church. -Greg Asche (talk) 18:26, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I believe he's a member of a Methodist church, but St John's is sort of the traditional "presidential" church. --Charlie (Colorado) 17:32, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  semi regular? 

message: *Quotes!--205.188.116.138 00:55, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Is this a request for George W. Bush quotes??? --LV (Dark Mark) 01:02, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know, I didn't create the header, just responded! Quotes!--205.188.116.138 01:03, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  quotes 

message: I would like to see a few lines about his presidency (9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq) in the introduction, which I consider far more important than this: Among his family, he acquired the nickname "W" (for his middle initial; later Dubya, a literal spelling of a colloquial pronunciation of the letter), which has become a common public nickname, used both affectionately and pejoratively. MartinHagberg 17:36, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Summary of presidency in the introduction 

message: How often does this page get vandalized
How is it vandalized
For what reason
And how do you fix it
And how do you tell what is vandalizations and absolut fact, for example some people might call him a murderer which he ofcurse he is. Millions of bakteria get murdered by his immune system each day ;)
Deng 11-02-06 12.30 CET
You can get a rough measure of the history of vandalism on this article from this link.  Vandalism is recognised by people using their commonsense. It's difficult to describe the distinction between opinionated statements and vandalism, but in practice the more outrageous expressions of opinion do seem to be intended as damage or at least a test of the wiki principle rather than a serious wish to make the article more useful to the encyclopedia. --Tony Sidaway 17:57, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: How often does this page get vandalised and what kind of vandalizations are there

message: I think we should change the text of the semi-protection template (for this page that is, not for the entire wiki) from "As a result of recent vandalism, editing of this page by new or anonymous users is temporarily disabled" to "As a result of vandalism, editing of this page by new or anonymous users is disabled". That is, take out "recent" and "temporary". I think this would more accuratly represent the state of this article. Oskar 18:22, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Silly me, I just realised that it was un-semi-protected. Well, sorry then, feel free to ignore me :P Oskar 18:24, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Text of template 

message: Looks like mass vandalism from anons has returned ever since the protection was removed. - Damicatz 19:19, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Tony Sidaway has already semi-protected it again. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 20:33, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Yes.  Interestingly one of the few productive edits during the whole period was this one by someone who wasn't logged in.  There were about three vandalism reverts per hours, which is comparable with the level of vandalism we had in  December before semi-protecting. --Tony Sidaway 20:43, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Perhaps the page should be protected from anon edits again 

message: What is the proper date format for this article. I see a lot dates in international format like 1974-9-4 instead of Setember 4, 1974. Which format is appropiate? I started changing to the latter, but I thought I would ask before I changed all of the dates.
:The software is set up so that things like 1974-09-04 are rendered as set in your preferences. Example: 1974-09-04 will be rendered as September 4, 1974 for me, and perhaps 4 September 1974 for others, depending on their settings. Now, this works anyway no matter which style you use, which is why I had to nowiki those - the second one looked like the first one when it's wikilinked. However, ISO format is not only neutral, but it's shorter. I consider it still a work in progress, so you can switch them back as far as I'm concerned, and wait until some official policy develops over them. --Golbez 23:55, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Date format 

message: on the Tenth Crusade page it refers to a speech given by President Bush, who is this not an appropriate See Also. When you talk about any Crusade you're reffering to the Medieval ones unless there was another one I don't know about.
When you're referring to " a crusade" it does not necessarily imply The Crusades. Try looking at a dictionary.--Hbutterfly 01:18, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tenth Crusade 

message: Is it just me, or is this a blatant euphemism?  You can withdraw from a room, or a club; but a treaty is an agreement, and if you don't abide by its terms, you violate it.  Did Hitler 'withdraw' from the Treaty of Versailles?
Paul Magnussen 00:06, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Withdrawing from treaties 

message: I personally think it deserves mention that Bush supported Texas's sodomy laws as governor, arguing that they were "symbolic of traditional values" and publicly opposed attempts to repeal them.  69.249.195.232 (talk) 21:51, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Support of Sodomy Laws as Texas Governor