Talk:Cheryl Cox

message: What is the motivation of the person who erased my article-in-progress?  That person erased a quote from Education Week in order to put in quotes from Cheryl Cox's campaign statement and Cheryl Cox's own office! I was also quoting from the Seattle Times when that person stepped in and replaced information that had only been up for a few minutes.
The only newspaper article the eraser checked was one from the notoriously biased San Diego Union Tribune, and that article was cherry-picked. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mauralarkins (talk • contribs) 
:I'm not sure who is being referred to here. I came upon this article after noticing that an anonymous user had blanked the page.  This user had also made suspicious edits to the Barbara Comstock article. When I examined the history of the Cheryl Cox article, I noticed that it did not provide a single verifiable source. I trimmed the article back to what could be verified from easily available sources. There was no "cherry-picking" involved, other than to present a minimalist stub of information in a neutral manner. older ≠ wiser 21:31, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Maura Larkins

message: ::Reply to Bkonrad (AKA  older ≠ wiser)
You are being referred to here.  I wrote the original Cheryl Cox article.  I blanked it, and then I found that somehow, the page was back up.  
Seeing that the article I wrote was still on the Internet, but lacking in verifiable sources, I decided to fix it and put in verifiable sources.  I erased 80 percent of what I had written.  Then I added quotes from Education Week and the Seattle Times and other sources, but these quotes never got into any version of the article, because, as I was working, you erased my article .  You replaced it with material you got from Cheryl Cox's campaign statements and irrelevant information from one newspaper source.
Here are three of the sources I was adding about Libia Gil, who was superintendent when Cheryl Cox joined the board:
Source 1:
http://www.teachermag.net/ew/ew_printstory.cfm?slug=07Seattle.h23
By John Gehring oct 15, 2003
Education Week
A community- based advisory committee recommended holding out on hiring any of the final four candidates. The first finalist to drop out was Joan Kowal, the superintendent-in-residence at Nova Southeastern University in Miami and a former superintendent of the 25,000-student Hayward Unified School District in California. Ms. Kowal was dogged by allegations of financial mismanagement in previous leadership positions. She referred to "a concerted campaign of undocumented rumors, allegations, and innuendo around my candidacy" in a letter to the board withdrawing her name. The next was Libia Gil, the chief academic officer of New American Schools, a school reform organization based in Alexandria, Va., and a former superintendent of the Chula Vista Elementary School District, the largest K-6 district in California. In an e-mail to the school board removing herself from contention, Ms. Gil cited the "polarization" of the selection process.  Given the negative response to the final candidates, Mr. Harvey believes the school board made the best decision in hiring Mr. Manhas.  John Dunn, the president of the Seattle Education Association, applauded the selection of Mr. Manhas at the same time he lambasted the search process and what he viewed as the poor quality of the final candidates.
Source 2:
http://www.newamericanschools.org/news/newsviewer.asp?highlightID=441&docID=714
McGraw Prize for Education Leadership Winner: Dr. Libia Gil Brings Award-winning Expertise to a National Level (9.24.02)
September 24, 2002
Recently Named Chief Academic Officer for New American Schools Set, Maintained High Academic Standards as Supt. in Chula Vista Elementary Schools
Washington, D.C. – Libia S. Gil, who will officially join New American Schools (NAS) on October 1 as its Chief Academic Officer, today received one of three of the prestigious $25,000 Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education.
Source 3:
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=websupegil06&date=20031006&query=libia+gil
Monday, October 06, 200
Gil withdraws from Seattle superintendent search
By Sanjay Bhatt
Seattle Times staff reporter
Libia Socorro Gil, the former superintendent at Chula Vista Elementary School District in California, confirmed today that she has withdrawn her candidacy for superintendent of Seattle Public Schools...
The Seattle School Board has scheduled a 7 p.m. meeting tomorrow to vote on the finalists. Prior to that, it will meet behind closed doors in executive session...
Gil, 56, has been chief academic officer at New American Schools in Alexandria, Va., since 2002. For nine years, she was superintendent at Chula Vista, where she was credited with giving schools more autonomy in making decisions, supporting the creation of charter schools and trimming the size of the central administration. The district won a vote of public confidence in 1998 when a $95 million school-renovation bond measure was approved by 76 percent.
Gil also worked in the Seattle School District from 1986 to 1993. She was assistant superintendent for curriculum and instructional support, and held other managerial positions. Waldman said she wasn't surprised by Gil's withdrawal. Last week a majority of the board's search advisory committee recommended the School Board not choose from the four finalists and postpone a decision...
Being new to Wikipedia, I decided to figure out if it was just me, or if other articles were being deleted inappropriately.  That's when I found the Barbara Comstock article that was scheduled for deletion because it didn't have verifiable sources.  So I added the US Department of Justice as a source, and a quotation by Comstock from that source, and Comstock's current law firm's website as a source.  I just wanted to see if a good article would be attacked.  And it was!  By you!  You called the changes I made  "suspicious"!  If the US Justice Department and its publications are "suspicious," then your addition of Cheryl Cox's campaign material, and your deletion of everything else, is more than "suspicious."  
Why don't you delete your article?   I don't think the information you've given is noteworthy.  It's pure politics.  It says nothing about important issues.
By the way, I use my real name.  Why don't you?   Mauralarkins 21:48, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: from Maura Larkins

message: :::Sigh, where to begin? ... 1) I never criticized the Cheryl Cox article before you blanked it. Get your facts straight before you go tossing around accusations. 2) I don't know what you are talking about when you say you erased 80 percent of my own article, then I added quotes from Education Week and the Seattle Times. There is no evidence of this in the history log for that page. What you consider to be irrelevant information from one newspaper source and Cheryl Cox's campaign statements is at the very least verifiable. If you have better information from verifiable sources that you can present in a neutral manner, then please do so. the information that you added to the Barbara Comstock article was not properly sourced. You cannot simply mention a giganic website like the US DOJ and expect that to be verifiable. Similarly, merely mentioning the name of a law firm does not pass as an acceptable source. I did describe the anonymous edits you made to the Comstock article under IP 68.111.239.209 as suspicious, since they came almost immediately after I added the prod template and did little to improve that very marginal article. I looked into the other edits made by that anonymous user when I saw that one such edit had been to blank this page. Looking at the previous content, I saw that it was completely unsourced. I did a very cursory Google search to see if there was any information available, and stripped out any details that could not be sourced to leave the article as a stub for future improvement. But rather than improve the article you've chosen to lash out with blind accusations. 
:::You ask Why don't you delete your article? -- it is not "my" article at all. And why should I delete it. A mayor of a moderately large city is probably noteworthy enough to warrant an article (unlike the Barbara Comstock article, where it there is no clear indication of why she warrants an article. Again, if you can find verifiable sources for the "important issues" with Cox, then please do so and stop making wildly inaccurate accusations. older ≠ wiser 22:44, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: reply from Bkonrad

message: Because WP:PROD is intended only for uncontroversial deletions, I have removed the proposed deletion tag per WP:PROD#Conflicts.  If anyone would like the article deleted, they should now take it to WP:AFD for a full discussion. NickelShoe (Talk) 01:44, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Deletion

message: I do appreciate your understanding that I want to dissociate myself from the Cheryl Cox article.  The one line that Bkonrad took from me to put in his article has been deleted.  The article as it stands has been entirely written by him!  Actually, it was largely written by Cheryl Cox, but that just makes this whole thing more interesting.Mauralarkins 03:32, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dear Nickel Shoe 

message: I apologized to Subwayguy for suspecting he was connected to you.  He doesn't erase a site the first time he sees it, like you do.  This fact is shown by the history of this site. And he sure doesn't replace articles with campaign materials.   
I'm really not impressed with your actions, Bkonrad.  But I do think they're interesting.  I've been looking at what other people say about Wikipedia, and I find there are a lot of complaints about people like you.  Mauralarkins 03:37, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  to Bkonrad 

message: :Is that a fact? People like me. Care to provide any specifics to back up your accusations? older ≠ wiser 04:05, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: reply from Bkonrad

message: Okay.  "People like you" means people who are anonymous.  People who don't own authorship of their writing.  People who are cavalier in their actions, both in deleting and in adding information to an article.  People who are defensive.  People who won't back down when they make a mistake.  People who won't apologize.
Wikipedia sometimes gets way too personal.  Wikipedia's article about Daniel Brandt quotes Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales: "I don't regard [Daniel Brandt] as a valid source about anything at all, based on my interactions with him. I tried very hard to help him, and he misrepresented nearly everything about our conversation in his very strange rant. He considers the very existence of a Wikipedia article about him to be a privacy violation, despite being a public person. I find it hard to take him very seriously at all. He misrepresents everything about our procedures...'"
My goodness!  Why are Jimmy Wales' personal observations in a biographical article about Daniel Brandt?  Jimmy doesn't always strive to be unbiased, does he?
I stand in awe of Daniel Brandt if Jimmy Wales is right.  Can it be true that Brandt managed to misrepresent EVERYTHING about Wikipedia procedures?  EVERYTHING?  He didn't leave out ANYTHING?  What an accomplishment!  
On the other hand, I'll admit that Brandt is also capable of excessive claims:  "Wikipedia has a NPOV (neutral point of view) policy that simply means you should have a footnote handy. But that's all — any footnote from any blogger or forum anywhere on the web is all you need. No one expects anyone at Wikipedia to dig deeper."
That's a bit of an overstatement.  Obviously, there are SOME people who do expect Wikipedia to dig deeper.  
But the phrase, "any footnote from any blogger or forum anywhere on the web is all you need. No one expects anyone at Wikipedia to dig deeper" certainly has a kernel of truth to it.  It speaks to the very problem I have pointed out to you.  You just went out and found a website that published Cheryl Cox's campaign material, and then made links to two pages Cheryl Cox wrote about herself!
Of course, none of this is a big deal.  No one has been harmed, not like Wikipedia did to  John Siegenthaler, Sr.  
And you certainly aren't the only one trying to cover up Cheryl Cox's past.  But as I have said, I am very interested in how people cover up information.  So this whole discussion is fascinating to me.  It's certainly more interesting than Cheryl Cox, herself.  
Leave your Cheryl Cox article on Wikipedia if you must.  If you erase it, all of our discussion will be lost, won't it?  There's an argument for keeping it.  This conversation is very revealing about how information is shared or hidden. The Cheryl Cox article just repeats what people in Chula Vista have heard during the campaign.  I've enjoyed this discussion because it has taught me about how Wikipedia works, and how very personal the decision-making process at Wikipedia is.  By the way, you administrators are really into each other, aren't you?  Google lists a Wikipedia page for SlimVirgin that is like nothing I have ever seen!  You'd never guess, from looking at that page, that Daniel Brandt has some pretty compelling stuff about SlimVirgin on his website that makes one think she is really just a human who makes mistakes, some of which are not very innocent.  Maybe you administrators need to get over yourselves?
:Ah, it's becoming clearer now where your antagonistic attitude is coming from. Wikipedia Review is by and large a bunch of malcontents with a rather jaundiced perspective on Wikipedia. I'd advise taking anything from Wikipedia Review with a very large grain of salt. older ≠ wiser 05:18, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't acquire my attitude from someone's website.  I did look on the Internet to find out if others had had similar experiences to mine.  "Malcontents" and "jaundiced" are not neutral words, are they?  Is everybody who criticizes Wikipedia a jaundiced malcontent?Mauralarkins 05:44, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, they are not neutral words and were not intended to be. There are valid criticisms of Wikipedia, presented in an intelligent manner -- but by and large that is not the case with Wikipedia Review -- they have an axe to grind and gleefully point out whatever real or imagined shortcomings they might see in Wikipedia, usually with viciously exaggerated hyperbole. No one with half an ounce of gray matter thinks Wikipedia is perfect or an idyllic environment. But it continues to function despite the naysayers. older ≠ wiser 05:53, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Maura Larkins

message: I urge you to add "school board member of Chula Vista Elementary School District" to your biography of Cheryl Cox.  This was her most notable position before becoming mayor.  True, she has succeeded in hiding many events that happened during her tenure, but it should be mentioned.  (In any other part of San Diego, if tens of thousands of dollars go missing from a school PTA, the voters read about it in the paper.  Not in Chula Vista.)
The article as it stands is clearly the work of someone who doesn't care, as you admitted yourself when you said, "I don't especially care whether there is an article on Cheryl Cox or not... I care nothing whatsoever about Steven Padilla... " (by older ≠ wiser 03:03, 31 December 2006)
Mauralarkins 03:54, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  to Bkonrad 

message: :Add it yourself. I know nothing about the subject, have no ongoing interest in the subject, and at this point, am beginning to regret having ever gotten involved. I quite deliberately reduced the article to stub status because there were no verifiable sources provided whatsoever at the time I came across the article. If you would spend even a fraction of the time you are wasting making wildly inaccurate accusations (which you are now in the process of trying to hide the evidence of), you could have easily improved the article. older ≠ wiser 04:05, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: reply from Bkonrad

message: It's fine with me if you delete the Barbara Comstock page. I didn't start the page, and I chose it randomly to see if it would get deleted even if I added links and quotes showing that this person was the chief spokesperson for the DOJ and John Ashcroft regarding the Patriot Act and other matters.  I'm personally glad that I learned about Barbara's existence, because I like to know about people in politics and people in power. But my experiment was simply an effort to find out if Wikipedia would decide to limit others' knowledge of her.  I'm a liberal myself, so obviously Barbara Comstock is no hero of mine. Still, I think it's a clearly unbiased article.  I'll be interested in the outcome no matter which way it goes.Mauralarkins 22:06, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maura Larkins 

message: January 2,  2006 
To Bkonrad:
I thought I was finished with Wikipedia, but the situation has become complicated.  Your comments now show up prominently in Google search results for my name.  Since many people will be reading them, it's important to set the record straight regarding the "baseless accusations" you accuse me of making.  Your attacks are based on three mistakes I made, each of them the result of my being new to Wikipedia and not knowing how to read the history pages accurately.
My baseless accusation #1:
I thought that you and Subwayguy might be the same person.  I had no idea that it was forbidden to wonder such a thing.  I was simply trying to figure out what happened.  In my experience many people use different usernames on the Internet, and nobody gets upset.  I personally prefer to sign my own real name to the things I write.  
Part of the problem we have now is that your anonymous attacks have shown up in a Google search for my real name.  I had no idea that having more than one user name was considered bad form on Wikipedia.  It's sort of ridiculous, really, since you and most of your fellow Wikipedians are anonymous.  You have absolutely no idea who anybody is.  Why don't you just sign your real names to what you write?  
Baseless accusation #2:
I said I blanked my article because you criticized it.  
You angrily responded, "I never criticized the Cheryl Cox article before you blanked it. Get your facts straight before you go tossing around accusations."  
Do you consider it an accusation to say someone criticized an article?  Isn't it a good thing to criticize an article?  Isn't that how Wikipedia's integrity is maintained?  It was a mistake, but wasn't an accusation. I LIKE the person who suggested that I provide verification for my statements.  I agreed with him that it needed work.  I blanked my article, then the robot revived it, and then I worked on fixing it, trying to get the article up to Wikipedia's standards.  (I have a large amount of documentation, including court documents, to verify all the statements in my article.)  I was in the middle of adding that documentation when you erased the article.  You seemed to come out of nowhere.  That's why I thought you were the guy who had left suggestions.
Baseless accusation #3:
 
In order to set the record straight, I erased my incorrect statement that you criticized my article. Then you accused me of hiding the record.  I have no desire to hide the record.  I very much want it to be correct.  I admit that you erased my article the first time you looked at it, without criticizing it first.  You also erased the messages Subwayguy had posted on my article.  You apparently thought Subwayguy was being too lax by giving me a few days to get my article up to Wikipedia standards.  
DID YOU THINK I WAS IN LEAGUE WITH A CANADIAN CONSERVATIVE THAT YOU DON’T LIKE?
IF YOU EDIT A VANDAL’S PAGE, THEN YOU’RE A VANDAL?
You said that you erased the Cheryl Cox article partly because of "suspicious changes" made to the Barbara Comstock article.  What in heaven's name was "suspicious" about them?  I added information I found on the US Department of Justice site, and her current employer’s site.  There's nothing suspicious about the fact that I didn't instantaneously make links for the information I added; I simply hadn't done it yet.  (I was new to Wikipedia.  I had to go figure out how links are done here.  I've added the links since then.  Are you still suspicious of my work on that article?  Are you still planning to delete it?)  The Canadian conservative who started the Barbara Comstock page is apparently unpopular at Wikipedia.  But that's no reason to suspect me of being in league with him.  If you checked the IP addresses, you'd find that I'm in San Diego and he/she is in Toronto.  [Jan. 5, 2007:  Sorry.  The Canadian conservative was using a comuter in MONTREAL, not Toronto. Maura Larkins]  If I were to assume you were somehow associated with anyone whose page you worked on, I would suspect you of vandalism every time you tried to improve a vandalized page.  
ANYONE WHO FORGETS TO SIGN IN IS A VANDAL?
You also said you suspected me because only my computer numbers showed up when I blanked my page.  That was because I forgot to sign in!   These justifications for taking immediate action against my article make no sense at all. 
Since the Cheryl Cox article is now prominently connected with my name on Google, I feel an obligation to make sure it is as good as it can be.  I will work on adding information to it.  I also feel an obligation to write a Steve Padilla article, to balance the Cheryl Cox article.  
You said to me, “Except in this case it is demonstrable that you have made baseless accusations, which in itself is a violation of civility. So my admonishment to you wasn't trying to conceal hidden meaning -- it was intended as an explicit caution not to continue doing as you had been. I have been explicit with you regarding the baseless accusations you've made, so I please don't play at being naïve.”
It accomplishes nothing to give someone an “explicit caution not to continue doing as you had been,” when that person simply made mistakes due to being in a very early stage of learning.  Such a statement is simply an effort to set yourself above that person.  The baseless insinuation contained in your “caution” is that my mistakes were intentional and intentionally harmful. 
If you plan to continue in this manner, I think that the least you can do is to sign your own name.  
I will work to keep the record as accurate as possible.  When I make mistakes, I will rectify them as soon as I can. 
Maura Larkins—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.111.243.223 (talk) 22:14, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Developments 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified  on Cheryl Cox. 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/20070912095606/http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/html/about/members.shtml to http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/html/about/members.shtml
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20061207175247/http://www.ci.chula-vista.ca.us:80/City_Services/Mayor_Council/Mayor/default.asp to http://www.ci.chula-vista.ca.us/city_services/Mayor_Council/Mayor/Default.asp
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071110161954/http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2007/04/shocked_shocked.html to http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2007/04/shocked_shocked.html
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thread_title:  External links modified