Talk:America First Policy Institute

CNN statements in the lede

Hi Doug Weller, I think I agree that we don't need the "who" tag, as it's somewhat clear that the claim about Nazi sympathy is stated later in the article. In reference to the "racist and violent comments," do you believe it's acceptable to make that statement as a fact, using only Andrew at CNN as the source? I think it would be much better to appropriately cite this characterization to this writer, rather than give readers the impression that this is Wikipedia's view as well. Mr. Daniel Plainview (talk) 16:13, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

@Mr. Daniel Plainview: he admits the comments. His article has more detail and more references which could be copied here. I have changed violent to inflammatory which is what the main text says. Doug Weller talk 18:07, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

::Yes I saw that he admits he made the comments, my issue is not that the comments were made, but using Wikipedia's voice to echo the views of CNN's writers. Higbie did not call his comments "racist." In 2014, he did say "I guess I am [racist]" if his views meet the definition, but in his admission he never characterized his comments as "racist". That is the view of Andrew Kaczynski of CNN. Mr. Daniel Plainview (talk) 18:16, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

But the comments are racist. All you have to do is read the CNN article to know that they are. Doug Weller talk 18:23, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

::::I get that most people would agree that the comments are racist, but that's WP:OR as I understand it. Why does Andrew Kacynzski get to determine what Wikipedia states as a verifiable fact? In every instance I've seen on this type of situation (Joy-Ann Reid for example), Wikipedia doesn't say "Reid wrote homophobic blog posts." Instead, it says "Reid wrote what were called "homophobic blog posts" by the New York Times." Why is this situation different? Mr. Daniel Plainview (talk) 18:39, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

I've added another source. We could include some examples I guess, but this isn't his article, people can read his article for more detial. Doug Weller talk 18:42, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

This belongs on Carl Higbie's page, not AFP's. Not significant here. Why do most of Spike Lee's racist and violent comments get reverted from Spike Lee's Wikipedia page, but Carl Higbie's cannot be reverted from the America First Policies page?

Higbie's Remarks

Comments were made in 2013 and apologized for 5 years later. Why has this been reverted? Pages that are unsourced and negative in tone, especially when they appear to have been created primarily to disparage the subject, should be deleted at once if there is no policy-compliant version to revert to; Creation of such pages, especially when repeated or in bad faith, is grounds for immediate blocking. Wesley Craig (talk) 23:28, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Note that I've struck through some sockpuppet edits, see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Hidden Tempo/Archive Doug Weller talk 13:12, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Non-neutral and non-encyclopedic content that speculates about a person's wishes and intentions

Hi Doug Weller, there's a serious issue with this part of the article:

"Mercer wanted America First Policies' data engine to be Cambridge Analytica, which would have effectively given her organizational control and potentially influence over the Republican Party. If Mercer had control over the organization's database and the money, Mercer could have led the organization to sway President's supporters against the President."

A Huffington Post Highline assertion that a person "wanted" something, or "could have" acted a certain way, should not be treated as an encyclopedic fact. That is an inference about a person's thoughts and hypothetical (thus, not observable) powers. Please be careful that the article does not espouse an overt political bias (the source does). If the statement is grounded in fact, then either the supporting material should be drawn from the citation into the text, or a less politically charged source should be found to substantiate the material. No matter a wikipedia editor's view about right-wing donors, it is inappropriate for Wikipedia articles to speculate on a person's wishes or to guess at untestable counterfactual scenarios. Allow me to give you a similar example with the politics flipped: imagine citing assertions in The Federalist to write a section saying George Soros wants to use Amazon Web Services because that gives him influence over the Democratic Party, with which he could sway Obama's supporters and convince them to become birthers. This is the level of un-encyclopedic, non-neutral absurdity in this article as it is presently written. Jaimalalatete (talk) 06:13, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

With all due respect, your 61 edits don't give you the experience to make such judgements.The only problem with that statement is the lack of attribution to Vicky Ward and I've fixed that. This is nothing like using The Federalist (no way are they equivalent) and your opinion that Vicky Ward is somehow politically charged, well, go to WP:RSN to complain if you think she and the Headline article aren't reliable sources. Doug Weller talk 09:51, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

It is an unwise Wikian who judges the potential contributions of an editor by their past number of wikipedia edits. That very attitude dissuades people who have great subject knowledge or formal research experience, but little time or familiarity to get involved with Wikipedia. Given your role in the project, perhaps it would be more productive to focus on the quality of the content rather than ad-hominem credential-bashing of editors with fewer edits than yourself.

Note that I did not edit the article at all, I simply flagged a section and left the justification in the edit summary. Note further that you are not responding to what I commented earlier, namely that using a mainstream left-wing source to speculate on a mainstream right-wing donor's desires and "what-if" situations is not encyclopedic. The two solutions would be to either balance the section out with better sources, or clarify the speculative nature of the Huffington Post assertions by drawing more information about the claim and its adherents from the source into the article.

Perhaps I have to make 62, 63, or even as many as 64 edits before you will value any contribution that I attempt to make to Wikipedia. However, WP:UNDUE says that, "If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts; If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents [...] Keep in mind that, in determining proper weight, we consider a viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources, not its prevalence among Wikipedia editors or the general public."

That means that no matter how much you or I may agree with a particular journalist, or enjoy reading a particular source, it should not impact our ability to remain impartial as editors. If HuffPo is in the majority on this topic (which it may not be), then it should be easy to support the claims with other reference sources. If HuffPo is in the significant minority on this topic (it may well be), then it should be easy to name prominent adherents to the speculative claims about Mercer. Somewhere along the line of my 61 edits, I understood that Wikipedia is not the place for guesswork about the internal monologues of major political figures and donors.

One of the bad things about politically polarized topics is that otherwise reasonable people lose touch with where exactly the middle ground lies, or how prevalent the opposing view may in fact be. There is a substantial subset of people within the American body politic (which is the relevant one when discussing a major American political donor and major backer of the American president) who lean slightly right and view HuffPo with the same gut reaction of disdain that you feel for The Federalist, and that is precisely why I used it as an example.

It would improve the quality of the article to at least better explain the speculative claims, and ideally set them in context by providing additional insight from other, more politically impartial sources. Jaimalalatete (talk) 11:15, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Go to WP:RSN or WP:NPOV. Or find a reliable source that disagrees with the author and add text from that. Doug Weller talk 11:47, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

References

Name changes

This seems to be its 3rd name.[1]. Doug Weller talk 12:49, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Maybe. See also [2]. Doug Weller talk 14:38, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Is The Economist a reliable source for this article?

This week's The Economist has an article about the America First Policy Institute (afpi) in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline "Chaos meets preparation", also available as https://www.economist.com/briefing/2023/07/13/a-second-trump-administration-would-get-its-way-far-more-than-the-first . Does Wikipedia view The Economist as a Reliable Source?. As a Medicare recipient who'll be turning 80 next year, I'm asking because it seems to be saying some pretty wild things about afpi, such as what it plans to do about recipients of such government benefits, namely obliging them to return to work. Vaughan Pratt (talk) 04:49, 15 July 2023 (UTC)