Fretlisa

Escalante

Thanks for your info on Joe. Rest assured, I definitely am on the pro-Joe side of the debate here. I think the whole accusation thing is pretty silly, especially considering that it's arguments over about a half dozen songs written 25 years ago being claimed by guys that then quit the band & didn't say peep about it for years. When I read the old versions of the Vandals/Joe articles I found there was a edit/vandalism war going on about this between people who are clearly big fans of the "original" (Stevo/Jan) lineup and people who are more inclined towards the post-1990 lineup. I read the stuff on the "scandal" site and concluded that it was definitely biased and not suited for reference on Wikipedia. I decided to rewrite the articles in a way that sounded neutral and incorporated the band's 25+ year history rather than focusing just on the first few years. This led to quite a few debates on the Vandals page about the copyright accusations, & every time I tried to reduce their presence in the article somebody would come back in insisting that they be included. What we wound up with was the best version I could come up with that acknowledged that the accusations happened, what they were about and what the conclusion was. Since the only citable reference I could find was the LA Times article, I decided to use that as a reference. There's not much published reference material on this stuff.

I definitely want to include a lot of what you added in your last edit. It just raised some issues of bias/citation and formatting that I didn't have time to thoroughly revise at the moment, so I reverted it until I could come back to it. One of the problems I have is that I couldn't find much biographical info about Joe, and Wikipedia is pretty strict about providing references and citations to info included in biographies of living persons, because of the potential for libel. A lot of what you said sounds perfectly reasonable, I just need to look at it again and figure out how to re-phrase it in a way that will be acceptable to everyone and follow the Wiki guidelines. It would help me a lot if you could provide some links or references that I could cite. Anything would be helpful: an online biography, screen credits, book, magazine article, whatever. The better referenced the biography is, the more complete picture we can paint of Joe and it can focus more on his accomplishments than the "scandals." I definitely want to make this a more well-rounded biography, and I welcome your contributions, but in the recent rounds of edits to the Vandals & Joe articles I've been the only one taking the onus of providing references/citations so I feel like I should keep up with that in order to keep the bio within Wiki's guidelines. Seaworldpunk 23:42, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanx! I used to have some magazine interviews w/ Joe, the Vandals, & Kung Fu staff that I'm digging around for, but they seem to have vanished with time & moving. Still looking, though! Seaworldpunk 21:17, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

It looks like we've come back to this issue in both The Vandals and Joe Escalante articles. To reiterate, I am more or less on your side of the argument here philosophically. I personally believe that whatever accusations the former members of the band made against Escalante were bogus and unfair. However, that doesn't change the fact that the accusations were made, and that this fact is notable both to The Vandals and to Escalante himself. From the standpoint of a well-meaning Wikipedia contributor, I have to acknowledge that we cannot exclude factual information simply because we don't like it or because it doesn't paint the picture we want it to paint. This information about the Vandals' legal controversies is some of the only information in either article that is supported with a reliable third-party reference, so I have to object to your repeatedly removing it. I have re-written these sections several times in order to keep them to-the-point while describing the relevant details, fitting them within the flow of the articles, and supplying the appropriate references. If you feel that this information is too prominent in the articles, then please add more referenced information to other areas of the articles in order to flesh them out and make them better. Don't simply keep removing the information you object to.

As to your argument that the information "has no place here unless you place something in Pfauter, Sakert, Jensen's, and Lumary's entry accusing them of blackmail," I have 2 responses. 1) Simply because information is not included in other articles to which it may be relevant does not justify removing it from an article to which it is relevant. I can't speak for the articles on the other members because I didn't write them, but if you feel the information belongs in those articles then please add it. 2) Accusing anyone of blackmail would violate Wikipedia's neutral point of view policies. I have tried, in editing the information about the controversy in the Vandals and Escalante articles, to simply present the arguments put forth by both sides and state the result of the legal actions. This is consistent with the information provided in the LA Times article which is used as a source. The articles neither claim that Escalante nor the other former Vandals were "in the wrong." They simply state what the accusations were, how both sides responded, and what the results were. I strongly believe that the information is being presented in a neutral, factual, and attributable manner. If you disagree, please raise your concerns on the article's talk page so that we and other editors can have a constructive discussion about it. Don't simply remove large chunks of referenced information. --IllaZilla 08:17, 30 May 2007 (UTC)