User talk:Bdushaw/USAs1

An invitation to use the article talk page

I would like to invite you say a few sentences on Talk:Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy when you delete or comment out sourced text on the Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy page. In general, I think your edits are just fine, but they're hard to figure out and fatiguing to your fellow readers and editors when those edits become more significant, when only a couple of words of explanation on the edit summary is all that you provide. Thanks -- Yellowdesk 03:29, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

So sorry - I had a feeling I was getting out ahead of myself. I think I am about done with my contributions there, having got it out of my system. I truly hope I have not really deleted anything - merely consolidated what seemed to be redundant material. I will strive to give a summary of what I have done in the future; particularly on such touchy pages as this one. I appreciate the work you have put into this entry! Bdushaw 08:04, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Peer Review for Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy

Take a look at Wikipedia:Featured article criteria. This is the fastest way to get a lay of the land on how to improve the article. I propose to take your request, and rewrite it up something like below, and put it on Wikipedia:Peer_review. The folks there are volunteering in the same fashion you're volunteering to edit this article. DRAFT below. It may take a few days to get some thoughful responses, but if and when we get them, they will definitely be indepandent views. Responding to the comments there promptly helps keep the reviewer's interest and enthusiasm up too, so it's a commitment on our end too. What do you think? -- Yellowdesk 03:00, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I think this works for me below. I've made one small change emphasizing that articles broken from this one have to stand on their own, a point that's been bugging me. Would "Dismissed U.S. Attorneys" or the timeline/chronology article stand on their own? (dunno). In recently editing other controversial pages, I've found that compared to what an administrator does in cleaning up an article, I excessively worry about NPOV. The Seattle times link I posted is quite a solid one about asserting the administrations role in all this - usually statements from a U.S. Attorney would be considered a reliable source, but the administration/DOJ is disputing some of those... But, I REALLY have to work on something else now. I have to sign off for a week or more. Cheers, and best of luck with the revision. Bdushaw 03:26, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Every article stands on its own, but there are lots of ways to show they're related. For example, USA PATRIOT Act is related to five or more other articles, and dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy is related to 40 different articles now. And List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_Pennsylvania to pick an odd example, also stands on its own. -- Yellowdesk 04:14, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

---

Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy is a G.W. Bush administration issue, that pulls in Department of Justice, and Congressional topics.

Since the editors active on it have collectively have stunbled onto a big project, that's constantly moving, we could use some independant wisdom and advice on smart editorial choices. This project page is the best place I could figure out, in addition to perhaps Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Congress..

The active editors are at a stage where we need to do some management of the article and split up things and make sub-articles. Talk:Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy will give a hint on what going on now. there's a giant archive too. We, at the moment don't have any disputes or vandalism occuring, which is rather remarkable, but this may change as the issue itself changes. Since this is a current event, we can expect more information to show up on the article. Since it is controversial, it is amazingly well sourced, and sourcing...mostly to reliable sources seems to be working. It has a Navigation Template Template:Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy, a Category with at least 35 or 40 members: Category:Dismissal of United States Attorneys controversy, and another template with links to committee testimony of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

So I'll put out questions here, and perhaps at the congressional project too, pointing to this location.

• Are there a couple of editors on this project interested in rendering some advice?

Here's a review of the edits on the article: WP Page Hist Stats: Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy

Known items: Formatting of the article

• Since it's big, we've chosen a non-standard introductory section system above the table of content to highlight just a few of the issues. It's probably time to push this below the table of contents, since it is way over three or four paragraphs.
• What's the standard on footnoting in the lead/introduction. We've found it desirable to do that, since we can't rely on the body of the article to stay the same in three weeks, and because the topic is touchy.
• Comments on the NPOV invited.
• Suggestions on what sections to split off into their own articles taken. Such articles should stand on their own, of course.

Editorializing

• There seem to be obvious truths about the controversy that can't quite be explicitly stated, according to policy, namely the Bush administration's motivations, since there are rather few citable facts on that front. Only citable editorials.

Links

• What is the policy or view regarding YouTube.com links. We have created a template to Attorney General Gonzales's testimony on April 19, 2007, and discovered a reliable publisher on YouTube that broke up an entire hearing into "Senator-question-periods" sized segments. We also link to C-SPAN's recordings. The template is: Template:Dismissal_of_U.S._attorneys_controversy_Gonzales_April_19_2007

• Other independant comments invited.

-- Yellowdesk 03:00, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Date wikification

Please check out: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers).
It happened I had just taken out the wiki link on the MONTH YEAR format at the top of the "Dismissal" article when you changed it back. The policy is not to wiki link the "MONTH YEAR" pair, because there is no user-display preference that can use that combination; link only when there is really something special about that month/year in the world at large. -- Yellowdesk 03:20, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Apologies for terseness. This is what I've been up to. Over at Wikipedia:Peer review/Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy/archive1, someone ran an automatic review, which gives a basic text analysis for easy to program stuff, the link to result is at the bottom of that page, with the automated result on this full page: Wikipedia:Peer_review/Automated/May_2007#Dismissal_of_U.S._attorneys_controversy. I was picking off the easy to fix stuff, so that when a human reviewer comes along, s/he doesn't complain about these same items too. Cheers, -- Yellowdesk 04:05, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Second thoughts on name of USA summary

Since no one has commented, it's looking like up to us. I desire to do the actual move via a re-copy out of the main article, since I don't want to track the changes of the last five or six days into the split out. That would mean your good edits to the /sandbox would need to be re-applied to the new stand-alone daughter article. I'd like to do this tonight, probably.
You last proposed the title: Summary of dismissed U.S. Attorneys 2006
What do you think of, since it's hard to call it "summary"
Details on dismissed U.S. Attorneys? or
Details on dismissed attorneys 2006.
I'll also post the article title question to the article talk. -- Yellowdesk 13:45, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

• Here's the result. Dismissed U.S. attorneys summary. I left the section "Other related controversial actions under Bush presidency" in the main article. I wasn't sure enough about that to move it just yet. -- Yellowdesk 13:01, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

No objections so far, but I will be disconnected for the next few days. Bdushaw 23:45, 16 May 2007 (UTC)