Eric Ely Options

[carbuncle]

Apparently the superintendent of a school district in the good ol' US of A leaked information about a police investigation to the person being investigated, who was their employee (or something). Bearian, who plays a lawyer on television, writes a BLP about him so that this important piece of world history gets recorded. After some discussions elsewhere it gets nominated for deletion.

This seems like a very typical and uninteresting case, but it's got Jimbo involved now (and of course the "Article Rescue Squadron" are flying in to save it). I'm making popcorn.

[Milton Roe]

Apparently the superintendent of a school district in the good ol' US of A leaked information about a police investigation to the person being investigated, who was their employee (or something). Bearian, who plays a lawyer on television, writes a BLP about him so that this important piece of world history gets recorded. After some discussions elsewhere it gets nominated for deletion.

This seems like a very typical and uninteresting case, but it's got Jimbo involved now (and of course the "Article Rescue Squadron" are flying in to save it). I'm making popcorn.

I wish there was a policy that the head-up-ARS people were simply prohibited from being involved with BLP articles, period. Would save much drahmas, our entertainment notwithstanding.

When I make my own I'm always afraid of losing a crown on an old maid. No old maids are worth that. (A divorcee maybe ala Edward VIII, but not an old maid).

[Abd]

I wish there was a policy that the head-up-ARS people were simply prohibited from being involved with BLP articles, period. Would save much drahmas, our entertainment notwithstanding.

When I make my own I'm always afraid of losing a crown on an old maid. No old maids are worth that. (A divorcee maybe ala Edward VIII, but not an old maid).

Look, there is an obvious solution that was long ago proposed, with some support behind it, WP:PWD, i.e., Pure Wiki Deletion, which is simply blanking with some special software features to handle it better.

A deletion debate can take place with a blanked page, and any admin could blank a BLP and protect it there pending a decision. Most BLP violations involve defamatory edits, and those are not routinely revision-deleted. So, WTF?

ARS is not the problem here, the problem is the difficulty of seeing the forest for one's head being up one's ass.

[carbuncle]

Bearian expands on his motivation for writing this BLP:

First of all, the scandal is not going away anytime soon - the coverage continued today and he is the issue in the campaign culminating in May. Secondly, I know that I am watching this article, and I am sure that others, are too. Bearian (talk) 15:40, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes - a good AfD debate is good for that. But what about in 5 years time? Stephen B Streater (talk) 16:00, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I think the families of the four girls who committed suicide due to bullying in Ely's schools will recall him in five years. I think Steve Raucci will remember him while he sits in prison five years from now. I suspect, from my experience as a litigator, that the lawsuits against the SCSD will still be dragging on for years to come. The candidates running "against him" now will be up for re-eelction in 2015. Once notable, a person is always notable. Bearian (talk) 17:26, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

[EricBarbour]

Once notable, a person is always notable. Bearian (talk) 17:26, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Where is Carolyn Doran when one needs her?

[Ottava]

That article is longer and better sourced than many highly notable literary figures.

Sigh.

Someone, shoot me! Please!

[Moulton]

Someone, shoot me! Please!

Maybe you and EricBarbour can do a mashup of your avatars.

[Milton Roe]

Once notable, a person is always notable. Bearian (talk) 17:26, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Where is Carolyn Doran when one needs her?

Why don't you point out her previous Wiki-BLP (isn't it on the web somewhere?) and all the stuff that's happened to her since, to Bearian, and see if he'll bring it up to date and post it. Two birds with one stone.

[Ottava]

Someone, shoot me! Please!

Maybe you and EricBarbour can do a mashup of your avatars.

Code Geass doesn't go so well with Pokemon.

[taiwopanfob]

That article is longer and better sourced than many highly notable literary figures.

Better sourced? Every last one is main-stream media. Literally, every one.

That alone should make it a candidate for instant, summary, erasure.

The usual things can be said here.

1. No sane person would waste more than a few minutes reading about Ely in the news, let alone devote hours creating a de novo biography about an otherwise non-notable bureaucrat. The real-world analog is someone persistently following Ely around, documenting their every public move and utterance on video. Wikipaparazi. Yes, indeed, the law says someone could do this, but the law doesn't say you must do it. In any polite society, such vultures should be identified as what they really are: crazy-ass wiki-stalking moterfuckin' creeps.

2. It is also a splendid case study in quantity vs. quality, and how this can be put to propaganda purpose. In essence, bullshit baffles brains: every last fact, no matter how trivial, is mentioned and referenced in exquisite detail. A completely novel synthesis of narrative erected from otherwise disparate sources, the whole apparatus clearly intended to disguise the fact that this is nothing more than a hit-piece.

Can the same be said of the articles you reference?

This post has been edited by taiwopanfob: Sat 17th April 2010, 12:40am

[Ottava]

That article is longer and better sourced than many highly notable literary figures.

Better sourced? Every last one is main-stream media. Literally, every one.

That alone should make it a candidate for instant, summary, erasure.

The usual things can be said here.

1. No sane person would waste more than a few minutes reading about Ely in the news, let alone devote hours creating a de novo biography about an otherwise non-notable bureaucrat. The real-world analog is someone persistently following Ely around, documenting their every public move and utterance on video. Wikipaparazi. Yes, indeed, the law says someone could do this, but the law doesn't say you must do it. In any polite society, such vultures should be identified as what they really are: crazy-ass wiki-stalking moterfuckin' creeps.

2. It is also a splendid case study in quantity vs. quality, and how this can be put to propaganda purpose. In essence, bullshit baffles brains: every last fact, no matter how trivial, is mentioned and referenced in exquisite detail. A completely novel synthesis of narrative erected from otherwise disparate sources, the whole apparatus clearly intended to disguise the fact that this is nothing more than a hit-piece.

Can the same be said of the articles you reference?

Those four pages of highly notable poets lack sources and get a lot of stuff wrong. It is shameful.

This post has been edited by Ottava: Sat 17th April 2010, 1:01am

[HRIP7]

1. No sane person would waste more than a few minutes reading about Ely in the news, let alone devote hours creating a de novo biography about an otherwise non-notable bureaucrat. The real-world analog is someone persistently following Ely around, documenting their every public move and utterance on video. Wikipaparazi. Yes, indeed, the law says someone could do this, but the law doesn't say you must do it. In any polite society, such vultures should be identified as what they really are: crazy-ass wiki-stalking moterfuckin' creeps.

2. It is also a splendid case study in quantity vs. quality, and how this can be put to propaganda purpose. In essence, bullshit baffles brains: every last fact, no matter how trivial, is mentioned and referenced in exquisite detail. A completely novel synthesis of narrative erected from otherwise disparate sources, the whole apparatus clearly intended to disguise the fact that this is nothing more than a hit-piece.

Yep, that about sums it up. And of course, if kept, this thing will still sit there in five years' time, endlessly multiplied by WP mirrors, and the top google hit for the guy.

[EricBarbour]

Someone, shoot me! Please!

Maybe you and EricBarbour can do a mashup of your avatars.

Code Geass doesn't go so well with Pokemon.

They both suck anyway. Now, Mnemosyne, that's what I call a show......

Why is Bearian pushing this with such insane obsessiveness? Well, since Ely is the
school district manager in Schenectady, and according to Hivemind, Bearian is a
law professor in Albany, and his own record shows a strange fondness for writing
BLPs about semi-obscure people and things from upstate New York....

Plus, he follows this editor around like a puppydog.....

Either Bearian is an insane nerd with a very light classwork load, who trolls
local newspapers for subject matter......
Or he's being paid to write about local things. Or mebbe some of both.

And he has a "sock". And his IP address is 71.245.156.223.

This post has been edited by EricBarbour: Sat 17th April 2010, 5:06am

[HRIP7]

The AfD has been closed as "no consensus", with the article being kept.

This post has been edited by HRIP7: Sat 17th April 2010, 10:19pm

[carbuncle]

After continued prodding on his talk page, Jimbo has decided to take action. From Talk:Eric Ely:

ongoing national news?
As far as I can tell, there has been NO national news coverage. Unless I overlooked something, all of the sources are local. The Boston sources only mention Ely in the context of Boston's search for a superintendent - clearly a local Boston story. The same for Billings. The same for Arlington. I am concerned that this misleading and false claim may have confounded some voters in the AfD - i.e. if they didn't read closely, they may have assumed a much higher level of notability than the sources indicate.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:28, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

This article is a clear BLP violation under WP:UNDUE
Due to the extreme length of what is a relatively minor controversy, this article is a clear WP:BLP violation due to WP:UNDUE. I am considering removing the entire section on the Raucci case and limiting it to a single sentence, in an effort to help this biography be closer to what it should be. Your thoughts?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:30, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Other editors have taken up the torch and removed some of the offending material. So ends round two. The third round should be interesting...

[the fieryangel]

Other editors have taken up the torch and removed some of the offending material. So ends round two. The third round should be interesting...

What I want to know is why is this so important to Bearian (T-C-L-K-R-D) ? He's obviously got an ax to grind here....and I'm wondering what his hidden motivation might be?

[Somey]

Other editors have taken up the torch and removed some of the offending material. So ends round two. The third round should be interesting...

Sorry to state the obvious, but this is why "default to delete" for "no consensus" AfD's on BLP articles was a good idea.

It's better than it was, but this article really shouldn't exist at all... Schenectady, NY isn't big or prominent enough to warrant this kind of attention for a school superintendent. Maybe one of the 50 largest cities in the world, I could sort of see that maybe - but not Schenectady.

[Eva Destruction]

Other editors have taken up the torch and removed some of the offending material. So ends round two. The third round should be interesting...

What I want to know is why is this so important to Bearian (T-C-L-K-R-D) ? He's obviously got an ax to grind here....and I'm wondering what his hidden motivation might be?

From his userpage, he lives in upstate NY; it's probably just that he knows the guy. Or, it could just be that it's a Big Deal in the local paper there, and he's made the mistake of assuming the rest of the world gives a shit.

This is the guy who recently claimed WR had "outed him", despite this thread being the first time he's even been mentioned here, FWIW. I'm not sure I'd take anything he says very seriously.

[Somey]

From his userpage, he lives in upstate NY; it's probably just that he knows the guy. Or, it could just be that it's a Big Deal in the local paper there, and he's made the mistake of assuming the rest of the world gives a shit.

Sometimes that's all it takes...

Specifically, he says he lives in Albany, and Schenectady is only about 15 miles north of there. I'm guessing (based on the photo) that he's in his mid-40's, so he could conceivably have kids (or maybe nieces/nephews) in high school up there, possibly even the one with the nasty facilities manager in question (the one Eric Ely "knew about") - though that wouldn't be a requirement, obviously.

[A Horse With No Name]

This is the guy who recently claimed WR had "outed him", despite this thread being the first time he's even been mentioned here, FWIW. I'm not sure I'd take anything he says very seriously.

Maybe he's confusing WR with Brandt's web site?