Talk:Valerie Solanas/Archive 2

edits of June 1, 2013

I'm about to revert the edits of today, except that I'll replace two now-dead links with the latest from archive.org that has the file, thus solving the problem of verifiability (a good solution to that problem would have been simply to tag each of the two references with a {{Dead link}} template), and preserve a hardened space. Content based on a nonexistent newspaper was previously removed and replaced (see the previous talk about it); why the content from the nonexistent newspaper was put back in today replacing what was correct being unstated, I'll restore with the proper newspaper; likewise for related content about a correction demanded by Solanas. Citations will be restored because quotations and sentences have to be sourced. When a source citation is to a specific page, that is more useful to a reader than a citation to two pages, so single-page citing will be restored. I'll restore a copyright year to a citation in order to help readers distinguish between two similar sources. A serial comma will be restored, a period will be deitalicized (in the sourced headline it wasn't), a "who" will be restored for the syntax, and a quotation will be corrected. I'm removing a conditional as the source provided an unconditional declaration and that will result in virtually the quotation that was present before today's editing, so I'm restoring the quotation. The renaming of the hospital may be valid but it's better to rely on what sourcing said (it's possible the hospital was renamed during its existence) and the link reduces or prevents confusion between hospitals. I'll preserve a new statement that was added today, about what she left behind after the shooting, as a source was supplied and I recall the statement from the past. I'll restore her statements about her motivation for the shooting and Feiden's statement about being unable to prevent the shooting, as they're undoubtedly relevant. Writing what reliable sources report is not promotional. If you disagree, please discuss. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:27, 1 June 2013 (UTC) (Corrected syntax: 17:33, 1 June 2013 (UTC))

Given that I've spent the better part of this morning removing an immense pile of material, all poorly sourced or unsourced, promoting the "source" for the story presented here and her business, and uprooting a small sock farm involved, I'm quite certain reversion would be inappropriate. If you can find a reliable source attesting to the credibility of the "source's" claims, which no one else has, things might be different, but there's certainly no good reason to replace a properly sourced account with an unverifiable self-aggrandizing claim somebody came up with 40 freaking years after the fact. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 17:47, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Hullaballoo Wolfowitz here. A SPA appeared one day and added a ton of poorly sourced material about Margo Feiden. Why are we promoting her? — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 17:59, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

HW's version is much better. First of all, it makes sense, as opposed to the previous version, which started with what everyone in 2004 thought happened, explained what was revealed in 2009 to have really happened, and left marginally intelligible palimpsests about what actually did happen in 1968 according to reliable sources. I don't know the details of the sock farm or the promotionalism, but the version that HW produced is far better than what was in there before. My feeling is that if there's a need to add any of the other material back in it should be discussed piecewise on this page first.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 18:01, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

What SPA? What sock farm? What promotion? The CBC and the N.Y. Times are reliable sources. And reverting to a bunch of old stuff of long before today meant putting in what was wrong (I already linked to the talk about the nonexistent newspapoer) and now it's being reverted back to that wrong content with irrelevant and ungrounded charges and dropping of citations. Wikipedia objects to promotional tone but that's not present. Feiden had something to say on point and the something is about her own experience of meeting Solanas and the shooting that followed and maybe someone doesn't believe her 40 years later but get a source that says she's not believable that much later and it can be added. We report. And we don't provide entire transcripts. If the passage should be aerated for clarity, that's different. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:24, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Robyn42 (talk · contribs) is a single-purpose account who has spammed Wikipedia with the exploits of Margo Feiden. She got to this article in October 2012. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 18:30, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

For TMI, see here: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Margo Feiden— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 18:50, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Background, and my comments about the underlying issues at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Promotion_campaign_involving_a_small_sock_farm. When the NYTimes ran a brief piece presenting Feiden's story, the response was so quick and skeptical that the Times posted an online disclaimer about her account not being "definitive." I haven't found any sources which made any effort to fact-check her account and found it credible. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 19:42, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Regardless of issues of credibility and self-promotion, Margo Feiden's claims were reported in various reliable sources. We shouldn't take them as gospel, but the claims should at least be mentioned somewhere in the article, prefaced with the disclaimer that they are solely based on the account of Margo Feiden. Kaldari (talk) 21:44, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

I wasn't the first with Feiden content but I downloaded and listened to the CBC interview, read other sourcing, edited the content, and discussed some of it at Talk on the script lost or held. I missed the comment by the Times about nondefinitiveness because I usually don't read readers' comments appended to news stories, so that's a good catch by the editor here; but the comment by the Times editor (".... Four decades, and a conviction, after the day in question, The Times does not present Ms.Fieden’s account as definitive. On the contrary, we consider this just one angle of the story, made relevant by the discovery of the manuscript and the National Arts Club event tonight.") means the Times did not wholly discredit Feiden's account, but accepted it as "one angle" and relevant. The appropriate treatment in Wikipedia, then, is as uncertain, which is how the last edit by me presented it. I would now edit "came forward to say" to (simply) "said"; the longer phrase may be promotional in tone and may have been carried along from another editor's work and anyway isn't useful.

Unanswered is why New York Daily was restored. I researched that item in microform. What publication is called New York Daily and has the content ascribed to it and how is what I wrote instead wrong?

Other edits are standard for Wikipedia style, such as being specific about pages.

I'll try to aerate my writing.

Thanks re the other user accounts.

I'll probably be back online tomorrow and early in the week.

Nick Levinson (talk) 22:09, 1 June 2013 (UTC) (Corrected tense and indenting: 22:16, 1 June 2013 (UTC))

It may also make sense to just summarize Feiden's account, rather than present it in detail. Since it's only one account of many, it should not receive undue weight. It's unfortunate that Feiden only came forward with this account after both Solanas and Girodias were dead. Kaldari (talk) 22:17, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunate it is, at least for us today. But that's happened before in other areas of history, and scholars and courts have accepted some (not all) of those delayed tellings as likely true. In this case, Feiden said that she rediscovered a document Solanas had given her and spoke after that; someone in her position could have made that up and made up the rest of the story or could have been emotionally unwilling to open the folder with the document until many years had passed and that's not so rare as to make that unbelievable. So I don't think we shoud judge whether the account is true but report based on sourcing. Shortening it sounds fine. (I'm going offline momentarily.) Nick Levinson (talk) 23:03, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

I expect to add one sentence on Feiden's account existing, qualified as nondefinitive and without details but with the three references readers can look up, and to edit and re-add on Feiden saying she knew of Solanas' intent to shoot because it contrasts with Krassner's not knowing, adding a link specifically for the Times comment of nondefiniteveness.

I don't think any of these accounts (Feiden and non-Feiden) is definitive; for example, I don't think the court that convicted Solanas promulgated findings of fact about events leading up to the shooting; so it's better to balance accounts from reliable sources rather than present only one.

I plan to replace the part about the nonexistent newspaper with the correct version, a matter I researched in the past using library microform. For example, I did not find a corrected headline and it appears unlikely that the headline was changed in the same paper's later edition/s especially if it would have been on an arrested then-obscure person's word, so it's more accurate to say that one source said it was changed but to be vague about when. Besides the Daily News, the Daily Mirror was also published and I have not seen that, a library no longer having it when I visited. Both were tabloids with rather similar layouts and the Mirror may well have had a different headline, and perhaps that is what was seen back then.

I plan to re-add on her motivation from a contempoorary account in the Daily News.

I also expect to add or re-add a preposition for syntax (where it should read "asked at the front desk"), a serial comma, a distinguishing copyright date into a ref element, and citations for quotations; to rephrase against extraneous wording ("proceeded to request" to "requested"); to replace "wore" with "worn" because it follows "had", the hospital name with the sourced one, the not-butch-look clause with one on the makeup being uncharacteristic as that is not quite the same thing and is sourced, a conditional virtual quotation with a nonconditional form that is an actual quotation as the latter is accurate and as virtual quotations should be quoted and sourced, and a conditional with a desire (about self-representation in court) as there is a difference and the latter is sourced; to harden a space; to decapitalize the initial of a midsentence quotation and to debracket another; to make a minor correction to a quotation per its source; and to rearrange ref elements with the same name so the full one is first. The edit respecting the newspaper will result in deitalicizing a period.

It appears there possibly may have been a confusion about Wikipedia terminology, although maybe not, so I'm stating this only in case it helps: Verifiability refers to the ability to find a copy of a source so Wikipedia's content can be verified against the cited source and is different from reliability, which is about whether a source can be trusted for the information gleaned from it. Whether a source has verified the information it presents is within reliability, not verifiability.

Nick Levinson (talk) 18:38, 2 June 2013 (UTC) (Corrected italicization: 18:44, 2 June 2013 (UTC))

Stop editing to reinstate disputed material without gaining consensus. As of right now, three users supported the version after my edits; two (including yourself) wanted to reinstate a version of the Feiden account. You haven't produced any reliable sources treating the account as credible, so it really doesn't deserve more than a trivial mention, if that. Especially given the self-promotional aspects involved. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 20:53, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

• I support the version put forward by Hullaballoo Wolfowitz, et al. This is obviously a case of Feiden attempting to insert herself into an historical narrative and unless sources are provided that corroborate Feiden's claims, any mention of her in this context is beyond WP:UNDUE and represents a clear case of a conflict of interest and self-promotion -- not to mention self-agrandizement. freshacconci talktalk 21:10, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

The version is a much shortened one in accordance with a suggestion above, and I posted to talk first. Whether it's self-promotional (or promotional through a representative) of Feiden is irrelevant, since the problem with promotionality on Wikipedia is about tone, and that's not present (analogously, an edit presenting an achievement of Bush or Obama would promote the president but that's not objectionable). The edit presents the Feiden account with a qualification as nondefinitive, and that accurately reflects the reliable sources. A conflict of interest is a separate matter involving another editor/s; the sourcing has been verified independently of that or those editors. You are disputing all of the edits, which means you are advocating for erroneous content that is not about Feiden. You have, for instance, reinstated about a newspaper that did not exist despite repeated discussion on this talk page that is entirely undisputed. You seem to be indiscriminate in your editing, and that is not helpful. Please self-revert and then do the specific edits which you support, so we can narrow the discussion. Nick Levinson (talk) 21:31, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

The dispute is with the mention of Feiden and several editors have stated that it should not be mentioned at all as it is not sourced and I am arguing that it is clearly a case of UNDUE. It is a shabby trick to reinsert contested text along with minor and technical edits making it difficult to remove the objectionable material. It's not my responsibility to fix those things you chose to edit along with the Feiden info. If you care to go back, by all means but the Feiden text, any mention of it, should stay out until consensus is reached. I'm assuming you are familiar with WP:BRD? You managed the first two, but you're not allowing for the third to play out. In any dispute, the new contested text should not be reinserted, especially if WP:BLP is concerned, which I believe it is in this case. freshacconci talktalk 22:46, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Since you are accusing me, it may help if you understand what happened. Editing both Feiden and non-Feiden content this month was first by another editor in a single revision including both and was for the reason of unverifiability and promotionality. Unverifiability was valid since two links had become dead and promotionality was exaggerated since promotional tone was hardly present and the very few words involved could have been edited out and I did that later, so I updated the links, largely restored the content, and posted on how to tag dead links for the future. While his edits had removed everything on Feiden, the stated reason was not that all Feiden content should be removed but promotionality, which could have been remedied with very little editing, and unverifiability, which no longer applied. Because his edit had reintroduced various errors into the article without even an attempt at explaining why, correcting them was correct and I posted about them. But he reverted without distinguishing them in either the summary or talk, doing precisely what you accused me of doing while I had not done so. Since his editing put the article into an erroneous state again and still without explanation as to the non-Feiden edits, I posted on edits I was about to make, waited about an hour and saw that no one answered (granted that's brief), and edited mainly as posted. I and some other editors have indeed been applying WP:BRD ever since the first of these edits and long before. There was no "trick", "shabby" or otherwise. What I inserted about Feiden the first time included corrections for the problem of verifiability and the second time was rewritten to redress concerns above. Everyone could see what the result would be in the context of the article, which was not visible before. Neither editor alf laylah wa laylah nor I was required to refrain from editing in those circumstances. Correcting errors and adding or re-adding sourced non-Feiden content are hardly merely "minor" or "technical". It was generally no more difficult for anyone to edit item by item than for anyone else to do so, and we have, because wholesale editing that treats good and bad (even if bad) as all bad is not what we should be doing. We should not simply extract on old version and put it in as if it was correct just because it came before the Feiden content; we should all be careful in our editing and leave corrections when they come or respond to them specifically.

What BLP issue do you see? Solanas, Warhol, and Girodias are dead. The only contentiousness about Feiden would be about doubts about her account, such as exactly which document by Solanas Feiden has, a matter already discussed on this talk page months ago, and various kinds of doubts about her account are not what we delete under BLP as long as we phrase carefully to avoid criticizing her for our doubts.

Of course, the Feiden account is sourced and reliably so. If you mean that a reliable source is one that would have sought corroborating evidence of Feiden's claims, which we do not require of sources to be reliable and cited in Wikipedia, then perhaps someone would argue that Billy Name's substantial statement about "the Cardboard Andy" should be deleted, but I wouldn't agree. Both Name's and Feiden's accounts, properly presented, are reliably sourced and relevant. The guideline is that "articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy", not that the reliable source has investigated every story for additional sources, because, if the latter were required, probably most of the sources now cited in the Valerie Solanas article and in most of Wikipedia would have to be deleted, along with their content.

Nick Levinson (talk) 15:34, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

propose to restore non-Feiden edits

I propose to restore some restore non-Feiden edits. These mainly restore content accuracy, a statement by Solanas on her motivation, placement of citations next to quotations as required, and clarity of a referent. Thank you, editor alf laylah wa laylah, for your edits, as I was going to propose some of them, too. These are the proposed non-Feiden edits (based on a post above):

• Re-adding Solanas' motivation from a contemporary account in the Daily News, not dependent on Feiden
• Re-adding citations for quotations
• Replacing the hospital name with the sourced name (Columbus–Mother Cabrini Hospital)
• Deleting on feminine clothes as uncharacteristic, as the source was, I think, limited to makeup as uncharacteristic
• Replacing a virtual quotation with a nearly-identical actual quotation because virtual quotations should be quoted and sourced
• Replacing a conditional with a desire (about self-representation in court) as there is a difference and the latter is sourced
• Making minor corrections to a quotation per its source ("someone" to "somebody" and adding a serial comma) (in the revision without these edits, the quotation is unsourced)
• Re-adding a distinguishing copyright date into a ref element, for readers' convenience
• Rearranging ref elements with the same name so the full one is first (unless lately fixed), preserving adjacent endnote numbering as ascending
• Unnaming a two-tag ref element if no longer identical with another two-tag same-named element

I'll wait a week for any response. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:34, 4 June 2013 (UTC) (Too late to correct, but 2d "restore" (6th word) was excess: 15:54, 4 June 2013 (UTC))

I am fine with all of these proposals.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 15:38, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Done or mostly done. All that's left, which probably should await the Feiden edits, are the last two items above and I'm not sure they apply anymore anyway. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:14, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

discussion on whether to have content on Feiden

Three reliable sources have carried Feiden's account, all are verifiable, and I have verified all of them. Wikipedia presents a great deal of content from reliable sources that do not conduct full-scale investigations of sources' claims; it's sufficient for a source to be reliable that it generally be prepared to fact-check, generally have a reputation for doing so, and do so when appropriate, but many reliable sources publish from press releases without further in-depth research and we don't exclude such stories from Wikipedia for that reason. Wikipedia even reports some self-statements from primary sources when reported with care. Although all three sources in this case are secondary, I applied the same care in presenting what they said about Feiden's claims as should be applied to primary sources. None of the sources is a self-publication. While Feiden may be personally benefitting from the publicity, major and significant minor media receive many requests for publicity and reject most of them. These three sources published these claims, not as fiction or advertising, but as information with enough credibility that the sources remain reliable for this information. Even as a fringe theory, because "at least one reliable secondary source ... [has] commented on it, disparaged it, or discussed it", notability is established for the claims, and we're not proposing a separate article for it, so the test is not as high as notability but the lesser test of due weight, thereby met. The readability (one of the issues for editor alf laylah wa laylah) was eased in my latest rewrite (perhaps further improvable), which made the presentation much shorter, as suggested by editor Kaldari. The contribution of the editor referred to by editor Malik Shabazz as an SPA was mostly fixed months ago and the last of it was recently fixed, so her having contributed doesn't matter regarding what should be in the article now. If anyone asserts that the N.Y. Times, CBC, and Interview are not reliable under Wikipedia's standards, please tell us how, or make another case for how writing Feiden's claims up briefly is illegitimate. Otherwise, they can be written up in different ways. Please suggest preferences. Even a general suggestion will help, if we should redraft. I'll wait a week for any response. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:34, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I think that there is room here for content about Feiden's version. I think it'd be best to propose additions about this here before adding them to the article at this point. I think that the version reverted by Freshacconci here was too-hastily reverted as it removed a lot of important non-Feiden material. I think the reverted Feiden material also managed to strike a good balance between Feiden's story and the stories of Krassner and Baer. I think that the Feiden material as inserted by Nick Levinson would be a good starting point for discussion on what to include.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 15:58, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

These are what I assume alf laylah wa laylah is referring to (based on this diff):

At the end of the SCUM Manifesto subsection, expanding the Krassner sentence:

In any event, Krassner denied that in 1968 he knew Solanas intended to kill Warhol,[^fn1] but Margo Feiden in 2009 said, according to James Barron, she did know that Solanas intended to kill Warhol, but could not prevent it (the Feiden account is not considered "definitive").[^fn2]

At the end of The Shooting subsection's first paragraph, adding:

Feiden has a different but nondefinitive account of having met Solanas a few hours before the shooting.[^fn2][^fn3][^fn4]

Adding to references:

<ref name="BrainDamageCtrl-HiTimes" />

<ref name="Barron">Barron, James, ''A Manuscript, a Confrontation, a Shooting'', ''op. cit.'' ("The Times does not present Ms.Fieden's account as definitive.... [but] {{Nowrap|consider[s]}} this just one angle of the story": ''id.'', [http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/a-manuscript-a-confrontation-a-shooting/#comment-467927 Collins, Nicole (assistant metropolitan editor), comment 3, June 23, 2009, 10:03 a.m.])</ref>

<ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20121105050737/http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/qpodcast_20090706.mp3 Ghomeshi, Jian, host, ''Q: The Podcast'', from ''CBC Radio 1''], as accessed November 18, 2012 ("highlights" from the July 6 [2009] program, per approximately 0:03–0:06 from start) (interview of Margo Feiden overall approx. 1:14–18:56 from start) (fragment approx. 5:06–5:45 from start) (based on cbc.ca link before archive.org link provided here).</ref>

<ref name="Interview">{{Cite journal|last=O'Brien|first=Glenn|title=History Rewrite|journal=Interview Magazine|date=2009-03-24|pages=1–3|url=http://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/history-rewrite/|accessdate=18 October 2012}}</ref>

Nick Levinson (talk) 16:27, 4 June 2013 (UTC) (Corrected nowiki markup: 16:31, 4 June 2013 (UTC))

I don't really like the additional material in the SCUM Manifesto subsection. That section is about year leading up to the shooting, and the last few sentences of the paragraph are about the controversy of whether Krassner knew that Solanas intended to shoot anyone when he lent her the $50 a few days before (thus abetting her crime). Throwing Margo Feiden into the paragraph is confusing and out of place. Feiden's account only becomes relevant on the day of the shooting, which is the subject of the next section. Kaldari (talk) 17:28, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

That's a good point. Maybe the sentences from "That spring, Solanas went to writer Paul Krassner." to the end of that paragraph should be moved into the next section, since they're about the lead-up to the shooting.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 17:34, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, those are the additions I mean. I think I would like to have some version of the first proposal, expanding the Krassner sentence. I'll hold off on suggesting specific rewrites until we see how people feel about putting the material in, although I only have minor sentence adjustments in mind. Also, I think that the second sentence, proposed for the "Shooting" section, doesn't add anything and gives undue weight to Feiden's version, which hasn't received much independent coverage compared to the other versions. The reason that this doesn't bother me about the expansion of the Krassner version is that there is no definitive account of what Solanas said to various people before-hand, so all versions of what she said to people before the shooting are on a par, including Feiden's.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 17:32, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree it's misplaced; everything in the SCUM Manifesto subsection's last paragraph starting at "That spring" should become its own paragraph and moved to begin the next subsection, The Shooting. (I should have paid more attention to the little question in my mind when I saw the Krassner sentence up there.)

Compared to the Feiden sources, some non-Feiden sources were not very high quality either, being research for movie use or as prefaces to the Manifesto (so not needing to be very accurate) and not citing support for specific statements. I'd like some way to cite the Feiden CBC and Interview sources so readers can judge, although the Times is a good start.

Nick Levinson (talk) 15:39, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Since it seems to be non-controversial that the last part of the SCUM section was misplaced, I moved it into the shooting section and rewrote it also. I wonder if we should mention Paul Morrissey's version that Krassner is specifically responding to in the High Times article since it gives context to Krassner's statement. I don't really know what I think about this right now.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 16:06, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

The move and rewrite helped. I haven't reviewed Morrissey's version, at least not lately, but I have no objection; adding it sounds like a good idea. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:25, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I'll probably get to this between tomorrow and the weekend. I have to get off the Internet now and maybe there'll be more coming at #Statement and Further Discussion on Feiden Content. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:21, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Done. First, I mainly re-added the first sentence and rewrote the second sentence of the proposed text mainly to give greater emphasis to Feiden's account being nondefinitive, to try to address the weight issue raised by alf laylah wa laylah. I also divided the paragraph after that sentence, because what comes after is not in dispute and should be separate. Then I added that Krassner was rejecting part of Morrissey's account, as it's relevant that they're in dispute, which Krassner made clear. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:12, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Consensus being reopened

Editor Hullaballoo Wolfowitz last month has deleted content, I restored, and the editor redeleted. The content was largely the result of a consensus reached over a year and a half ago. In addition, he changed "purchased" to "acquired" regarding the gun, I restored the prior word with a short explanation in the edit summary, and the editor changed it back, although the article further on says that, "[a]ccording to Freddie Baer, ... she used the $50 Krassner gave her to buy a .32 automatic pistol"; the editor did not cite a source contradicting the Baer sourcing. The earlier of these new deletions was based on irrelevant grounds; I replied in my edit summary; and the redeletion edit summary refers to the discussion, presumably this Talk topic/section, which, however, did not support wholesale deletion. If it is now to be deleted as "promotional", that objection for Wikipedia can only be about tone, not content, so the appropriate editing would be to reword for tone; but I don't see where the tone is promotional. Even "fringe" content, even if this is fringe and not simply a disagreement, is reportable, because we report multiple vews when supported by sourcing, as this content already is, so, in a matter as important as the shooting, it is due weight. Nick Levinson (talk) 20:50, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

• Oh, bullshit. The content involved does not reflect "a consensus reached over a year and a half ago"; it couldn't, because it was added about seven months ago, and presented, at tedious length, a fringe theory advanced decades after the events, added by one of a cadre of SPAs with a history of promoting an art gallery and its owner. The previous complaints were rather resoundingly rejected at ANI in 2013; one of the SPAs sub rosa added back rejecteded content without even a pretense of discussion a year later. The previous summary mentions of the fringe theory were sufficient, reflected consensus, and remain in this article. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 21:29, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

The editing of over a year and a half ago is linked to above. I looked at the edits (diffs) of seven months ago, which would be July, 2014, for the more recent addition you mention, and I don't see anything of the sort. Please link to the edit/s to which you are referring.

Wikipedia generally does not care who edits or their motivations; we care about the content, including sourcing. I, and Wikipedia in general, respect that you have a strong opinion on the subject, and you are not obligated to add content with which you disagree, regardless of why you disagree, other than no one should edit so as to cherrypick from a source. But the content on the Feiden involvement with the Solanas shooting had already been added and the consensus for it is above. Anyone is free to reopen consensus but we need good reasoning to delete sourced content. The Feiden account is a different account and it has been criticized, but the criticism is included and where there are two accounts about a weighty (and notable) shooting then both of the accounts should be stated as long as they're sourced. When the second account was advanced may matter as to credibility among readers but that point seems to be well enough explained to leave it to readers to judge; it does not matter for whether to add the account into the article. The claim that America was discovered by Chinese sailors before Columbus sailed is not wrong because it is a recent claim and relativity in physics is not wrong because it wasn't developed until less than a century ago. A great deal of history is published only long after the events it is about.

A search of ANI archives for anything on Valerie Solanas yielded only four results, only two of which are relevant. The incident topic Promotion campaign involving a small sock farm contains only one statement about the Solanas article, in the context of several issues about other articles and editors, and no one else discussed the Solanas article. In the other incident topic, Hullaballoo Wolfowitz and Margo Feiden Galleries, only Feiden/Factor-ies mentions the Solanas article and talk page, and no one else seems even to hint at it, other than to discuss Feiden's editing and posts generally. That is not a "[rather resounding rejection]" at ANI of anything to do with Solanas, other than that Feiden perhaps should not edit the article. I did some of the editing and the content in question is sourced, weighty, and nonpromotional. Feiden's own history outside of the Solanas context is irrelevant to the inclusion of the Feiden account in the Solanas article.

Nick Levinson (talk) 01:52, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Restored. Nick Levinson (talk) 02:51, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

I look forward to editor Hullaballoo Wolfowitz's discussion here or elsewhere on this talk page about why the disagreement on weight and on the sourcing re Solanas' purchase of the gun, after his recent reverting with his summary basically saying "as before".

The word regarding the gun is effectively a weasel word, since the sourcing supports a more specific word, but Hullaballoo Wolfowitz keeps preferring the weasel word over the specific one that is sourced. This contra-Wikipedia preference has not been explained.

The consensus on including the article's content about Feiden has been supported by alf laylah wa laylah ("I think that there is room here for content about Feiden's version.... I think the reverted Feiden material also managed to strike a good balance between Feiden's story and the stories of Krassner and Baer. I think that the Feiden material as inserted by Nick Levinson would be a good starting point for discussion on what to include." (delinked)) ("all versions of what she [Solanas] said to people before the shooting are on a par, including Feiden's") and Kaldari ("Feiden's account ... becomes relevant on the day of the shooting, which is the subject of the next section"). This consensus occurred after Hullaballoo Wolfowitz's earlier deletion of virtually everything related to Feiden over a year and eight months ago; the consensus responded to concerns raised by freshacconci and Malik Shabazz and the consensus disagreed with Hullaballoo Wolfowitz's view and supported inclusion. When the article was marked as a Good Article, an extensive albeit editorially defective version of the Feiden content was present; it was not mostly absent, and that presence in a GA reflected consensus.

Nick Levinson (talk) 00:52, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with Nick. The most authoritative source on the matter is Fahs' biography. The book is thoroughly researched, footnoted throughout, and written by a college professor. The book may not be notable in its own right, but it is certainly a high quality reliable source. Fahs favors Feiden's version of events, which I believe lends them enough weight to warrant including them here. Personally, I find Feiden's story to be less than completely convincing, but my personal opinion doesn't have any weight in the matter. I do agree with Wolfowitz, however, that the Feiden material was overly detailed and should be better summarized. I also think it is important to clarify that neither version of events are definitive.

On a slight tangent, I think the sentence "Professor Fahs states that Girodias may have fabricated the account in order to boost sales..." is problematic. What Fahs actually said was that "some believe this actually happened, while others believe Maurice started this as a rumor so he could sell more copies of SCUM Manifesto..." and cites this to Joshua Cohen who wrote: "There was a rumor, possibly spread by Girodias himself, that the deranged Solanas had actually been after him; that she had stopped by Olympia USA’s Gramercy Park office first, but, finding Girodias gone, instead walked, gun in hand, to Warhol’s Factory at Union Square." Personally I think we can probably just ditch the sentence as it's second-hand speculation and doesn't really add anything of value. Kaldari (talk) 07:31, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Based on Kaldari's description, I think the rumor about Girodias is reportable, as long as it is labeled as a rumor and sourced to Fahs and Cohen. Girodias is dead (according to Wikipedia), so the BLP strictures don't apply. (By the way, I plan shortly to add the Manifesto to the Girodias article. Someone planned to add it in 2007, but it's not there now.)

I have asked Hullaballoo Wolfowitz to stop just reverting and please come to this page and discuss specific concerns.

Nick Levinson (talk) 01:39, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Restored. Nick Levinson (talk) 23:42, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Improving the "After murder attempt" section

This section rightly lists the notable "support" Solanas received after the shooting. However, alone this is misleading as the shooting received criticism and what support it garnered was controversial. The section would be improved by making this controversy and its fallout more apparent. Solanas was not the simple hero the section makes her seem.

The source material reveals how woefully lacking this context is. The Friedan citation for example is a lengthy discussion of how feminists of the day repudiated Solanas and her supporters. For her part Friedan is repeating her position that feminists must be diligent against this urge toward what she calls "a pseudo-radical cop out" that treats men as enemies. Yet from this discussion, the article only describes Atkinson who supported Solanas and omits the context that she was repudiated by the women's movement for it. Friedan mentions how the media continued to treat Atkinson as a leader despite being kicked out, and here 40 years later Wikipedia makes the same mistake. Atkinson's support is noteworthy but must not be stated as if it was uncontroversial.

Also I have added a "citation needed" tag to the unsourced claim that Robin Morgan demonstrated for Solanas's release from prison. After searching I suspect this may be a woozle effect resulting from a 1970 press release that called for (non-prisoner) women to be freed from leftist politics ("Free Robin Morgan! ... Free our sisters! Free ourselves!"). The citations seem padded, with each sourced claim wrongly citing the SCUM manifesto and a claim citing two separate pages of Friedan when only one is accurate.

Please help improve the section and ensure accurate citations. Emarkcd (talk) 15:44, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Actions regarding Atkinson and Kennedy need to be relevant to the Solanas subject to be in this article. Does a source say that the repudiation of Atkinson or the departure of Kennedy was because of what they did regarding Solanas? As the article stands now, the added texts read as irrelevant, because lots of people are kicked out of lots of kinds of organizations without discrediting everything they did there. It's more likely that it was their general feminist radicalism that led to the repudiation and the departure, not the Solanas support specifically. And Atkinson did not leave the women's movement when she left NOW. If you have a source clarifyng for either person, please add it, else it should come out.

I didn't add about Morgan originally and I don't have a source on that. Maybe someone else does. If it's not sourceable, then it should go.

Nick Levinson (talk) 00:42, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

The answer is above: "The source material reveals how woefully lacking this context is. The Friedan citation for example is a lengthy discussion of how feminists of the day repudiated Solanas and her supporters." The very sources WP was using to describe these women's support were discussing how feminists repudiated them for it. This is why the sentences that say feminists repudiated them include citations to the very same source (and page number) cited by the descriptions of their support for Solanas.

It is also worth pointing out that the source describing NOW's repudiation is Betty Friedan, the woman who created NOW. A reliable source about the group's politics and activities. While it is true that these women were unpopular for other reasons too, the point that Friedan is making is that their support of Solanas is another case that put them at odds with their peers, and for that they were repudiated.

No action of the board of New York NOW, of national NOW, no policy ever voted by the members advocated the shooting of men in the balls, the elimination of men as proposed by that SCUM manifesto! Ti-Grace Atkinson was repudiated by her NOW board.

— Friedan, It Changed My Life

Frankly even if this specific case hadn't been an identified factor for their unpopularity (thankfully, it was) their unpopularity is exactly as noteworthy as their membership is. Friedan makes this point too when noting the media continued to treat them merely as leaders, instead of the repudiated, former-leaders they were. When we article notes multiple Solanas supporters are NOW members or board members or leaders, and leaves it at that alone, it wrongly gives the impression that this was popular or at least uncontroversial for NOW. That it so far from the case. It's a disservice to WP's readers to make the Solanas shooting and its support sound uncontroversial. Emarkcd (talk) 06:30, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

The safest course is to quote or closely paraphrase Friedan et al. and avoid interpreting beyond that into repudiation/departure. (WP:SYN is about multiple sources but a like principle applies to a single source.) Friedan was a founder and the most prominent of the founders, but repudiation by a board means other pro-repudiation views were present and unless a source shows that the board's collective (not necessarily unanimous) view was that Atkinson's pro-Solanas position was the main problem then all we can do with Friedan's view is report it as Friedan's, not the board's, despite her importance within NOW. Kennedy having departed, reasons for departure would come mainly from her and not from the board, although other people might have had opinions about her views on Solanas and those might be reportable in this article. In short, insofar as sourceable, the repudiation and the departure would be relevant to this article and should be included, but not otherwise.

I've restored the Friedan citations. They were not wrong. Perhaps you didn't check which edition was being cited in each case. The two editions had different page numbers. And we're generally required to cite quotations next to the quotations.

Nick Levinson (talk) 01:59, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

We have a reliable source that is saying this is why the board repudiated her. Unless you're saying we must naively assume Friedan is a terrible writer that strings random and unrelated sentences together, this is the plain-english reading of what Friedan has written. Emarkcd (talk) 15:54, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

I'd also appreciate if you could point me to a Wikipedia guideline that tells us to cite the page numbers for each reprinted edition of the same work. Besides having never seen this and being unable to imagine a purpose, the two big problems this raises are (1) that some works (especially academic texts) are frequently reprinted and it is a burden to include page numbers for each and (2) this furthers the earlier vandalism that had padded the citations by incorrectly referencing the SCUM manifesto for each claim. Friedan's is a reliable source, and that's enough. There's no reason to have a citation for each reprint. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Emarkcd (talk • contribs) 16:03, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Friedan's is, I agree, a reliable source, so, to solve the problem, I plan to attribute the statement about repudiation to her.

The two editions are nearly a quarter-century apart, one soon after the events and the other after long reflection, and they're consistent. We don't cite every edition, but often that's because any of us usually reads only one. In this case, the later edition is not merely a reprint, although they're similar. If justifiable, we're allowed to cite up to three sources per statement. I agree that citing both editions in this case is debatable, but I think it's justified by the spread of years. Bundling in this case would be problematic since the later edition is cited elsewhere for another point.

One reason for citing various editions of the SCUM Manifesto is that some of them include accompanying content by other writers, and that is presumably why they are being cited. If I haven't read one or another of them, I still accept those citations on good faith.

It's not padding or vandalism to be more thorough with citations, even if it's inappropriate for another reason. Vandalism has a quite different meaning for Wikipedia and is not relevant to these edits.

Nick Levinson (talk) 20:41, 8 March 2015 (UTC) (Corrected syntax: 20:48, 8 March 2015 (UTC))

You have misunderstood. The issue is not how many versions of SCUM Manifesto are cited. The issue is citing it to support claims that are not in that text. When a handful of different writers do not have a single word written by or about them in the SCUM Manifesto, that work cannot be used to support claims about what those writers said or believe. When the citation was added after every single sentence and didn't apply to any of them, the page was being intentionally distorted whether you choose to call that "vandalism" or not. Emarkcd (talk) 20:04, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

I think every Manifesto edition that I've seen except Solanas' early self-published one has content by another author as well as Solanas' work. The Manifesto itself was not edited to include subsequent developments (there was editing but not for news about her later hospitalization, for example). But publishers apparently commissioned authors to write something for each edition so a book would not be the Manifesto alone. The problem in the article seems to be that some editor/s unfortunately neglected to specify the other author and the exact page/s. I wish they had and that information should be added, but I don't think the citations are padding, vandalism (not even my term), excessive, or off-point for the texts for which they're offered in support. They should stay, but I hope someone expands them to make clear the author being cited when it's not Solanas and the precise page or pages being cited. Nick Levinson (talk) 04:59, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

a hotel partly named Bristol

Hotel Bristol or Bristol Hotel, whichever name it used when Solanas died, at 56 Mason Street, San Francisco, is described in Wikipedia's Hotel Bristol article, which mentions Valerie Solanas. More importantly, see http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMAD0B_Hotel_Bristol_San_Francisco_CA (Hotel Bristol) and https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-bristol-hotel-san-francisco (The Bristol Hotel). It is also business law that to name a commercial property so similarly to another that it confuses purchasers is unfair competition, making it unlikely that two hotels existed with such names in the same city, never mind the same address. Nick Levinson (talk) 03:54, 5 February 2017 (UTC) (URLs not formatted to preclude needing another section.)

It looks like the hotel's name (in chronological order) was Athens Lodgings -> Hotel Belmont -> Hotel Bristol -> Bristol Hotel. Kaldari (talk) 04:57, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Is Solanas "an American radical feminist writer"?

That's how the lede and writer infobox describe her. Solanas "refuse[d] to identify as feminist" though. When (if ever) does Wikipedia assign a group identification like this to people who rejected it? I checked the Joan Rivers article as she is another woman that refused the feminist label but is often called a feminist icon and her page does not mention feminism. Is there a policy guideline in place for these cases? Emarkcd (talk) 06:54, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

We rely on what sources say. For any person, if a source nontrivially says s/he's a feminist and another says not at all, we report both, and one of those sources can be a primary source from that person (primary sources must be used with more care). And the lead summarizes the body and the infobox covering certain itemized points summarizes the article for those points. That would be true of any article; I know next to nothing about Rivers, so I can't analyze that article. When another article is defective, that is not precedent for any other article. We do not rely exclusively on a person's self-description, although including a sourced self-description is generally okay. Nick Levinson (talk) 02:04, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

There are no citations for the claim she is a feminist, which is only made in the lede. I've removed it, but if someone restores it with citations then I'll happily rewrite to include proper citations explaining she refused to identify as a feminist. Emarkcd (talk) 15:54, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

While Solanas rejected liberal feminism, there are in the body citation-supported claims welcoming her as part of radical feminism (whatever the effect on utterers' relationship with NOW and not counting Mailer) and saying she instigated radical feminism and the Manifesto supports those claims. A browser search using the string "feminis" (7 letters) finds them. The lead does not need to have citations that are in the body. I'll wait for comment before restoring, including for the infobox. Adding citations for her rejection of feminism, especially if of radical feminism, is welcome; we report multiple sides of an issue.

I also noticed that one of the claims, a quotation of Kennedy, lost its citations when you edited. I expect to restore them shortly.

Nick Levinson (talk) 21:09, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

I've re-added to the lead and the infobox except that I edited the re-additions to focus on radical feminism, not just feminism, to avoid a confusion with liberal feminism that she may have rejected.

Anyone may add sourcing on her rejection of feminism or of any branch of feminism, if such sourcing is available. We report disputes between sources.

Nick Levinson (talk) 00:14, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

This doesn't resolve the issue. We agree that other people "welcom[ed] her as a part of radical feminism" but the issue is how to reconcile that with her, personal, explicit, authoritative rejection of that label. Can Wikipedia attribute political identities that individuals themselves rejected? Does Wiki have a guideline for this conflict? Can you point to comparable cases?

I suspect individuals themselves have the final say in such cases. It is fair to include other people "welcoming" her and why. But Wikipedia's voice should not attribute the ID, and the statements that do should be contrasted with her rejection of it. Emarkcd (talk) 20:04, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

To add: there doesn't seem to be any dispute between sources. There are no sources saying she identified as a feminist, only sources saying she didn't. As for her adoring fans, there is no dispute about their adoration. The question is whether her fan club chooses her political identity (over her objections) or she does. Emarkcd (talk) 20:11, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Judging from the article (body and lead), Solanas appears to have rejected liberal feminism, maybe feminism as a whole, but most likely mainly liberal feminism, while being considered a radical feminist. I haven't read Fahs' work, but the sense I get overall is that what Solanas more cnsistently rejected was the liberal branch as too lightweight, as preferring civil disobedience when she (my words) wanted to overturn the world. Radical feminism seems to fit the range of sources.

Someone need not have embraced the label of feminism themselves. The lead on Mary Wollstonecraft says: "Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers", even though, I think, the words feminism and feminist weren't in use in her lifetime. There are probably other examples like that.

Nick Levinson (talk) 05:08, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

If Solanas were still alive, we might defer to her preference to not be labeled as a feminist (per WP:BLP). But she's been dead for a long time, so we use whatever terms history has chosen to label her with, which includes "radical feminist". Kaldari (talk) 05:04, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

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