Talk:Dave Winer

This wiki reads like a self promotion piece. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.31.106.35 (talk) 18:29, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Trivia: character failings and notable German great-uncle

The Relationship to the public section has one single point, which is forcefully expressed in Tim O'Reilly's allegation that Winer can become "disruptive and abusive" when he's being opposed. The rest of this section is either padding that magnifies the allegation of character failings or cotton candy that attempts to diminish that allegation.

I'm aware that there are many people who will readily confirm that Winer will get "disruptive and abusive" when he's being opposed. Some of those people have started websites dedicated to that proposition.

Winer, in other words, has enemies; there are many people who dislike him intensely for a number of things that he has said and done. Let's assume that some, or many, of the things he's said and done were bad, stupid, wicked, and ill-advised, or that they betray inexcusable character failings, or all of the above.

Now, what is Wikipedia to do about it? Should it quote his enemies' allegations against his character but, in order to mitigate these allegations, add a quote or two from a friend who will vouch for the person's sterling character? Should it do so even if the statements from both friends and enemies are self-published and in the absence of an unbiased, reliable examination of the allegations by a neutral observer who isn't a party to any of the conflicts the person has been involved in?

The answer has to be no according to the guidelines: "If an allegation or incident is notable, relevant, and well-documented by reliable published sources, it belongs in the article—even if it's negative and the subject dislikes all mention of it. If it is not documented by reliable third-party sources, leave it out". This section does not present any reliable third-party sources for Winer's alleged character failings. I therefore nominate this section for wholesale and immediate removal without replacement.

I'm also going to rename the section and call it "Trivia" to see if I can get a reaction, as my initial comment under the Relationship to the public heading failed to attract any notice. ARK (talk) 18:46, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

You have made some excellent changes to the article. But this particular section, to which you object, exists because when it is removed it gets re-created only worse. There was a battle about this in 2005, at which time I was one of those trying to remove the section. [1] In 2007, the discussion was raised again. That discussion is now archived under 'Old threads.' I do agree that his great-uncle would do better in trivia, but that does not obviate the function of the rest of this section. betsythedevine (talk) 11:44, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

For the benefit of ARK and anyone else who wants to discuss this, here is his June 3 comment added to the Old Thread section marked "Archived discussion":'What relevance, if any, does this section have? Anyone who has spent two decades or more as a highly vocal public figure is bound to have both friends and enemies: listing testimonies to that effect seems entirely pointless, however notable and reliable the sources, however impartial the balance of friends and enemies. The testimonials, except for one, are also self-published. I suggest that the section be removed without replacement. ARK (talk) 02:02, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Looking at the articles of such controversial figures as Rush Limbaugh or Hillary Clinton, they do give some space to the existence of controversy. Not all self-published material fails WP:RS, and the blogs cited in this section are well-respected. Moving the trivial discussion of Winer's uncle out of this section makes good sense. Removing this entire section will be perceived by many -- not by me, incidentally, but by Dave's critics -- as his friends whitewashing the article POV. That is my opinion, the opinions of rational others may differ. betsythedevine (talk) 15:56, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, WP:RS prohibits self-published sources for statements of opinion when it comes to biographies of living persons. Obviously both O'Reilly and Bray are highly respected, but O'Reilly's statement is an opinion, while Bray's statement is an opinion masquerading as an observation of empirical fact. Moreover, if "reliable" under WP:WELLKNOWN is meant to exclude bias, then the inclusion of both O'Reilly and Bray's statements run afoul of that provision as well, as both O'Reilly and Bray have had a "rocky relationship" with Winer.

Technicalities aside: what if Winer repeatedly did fail to live up to the standards of respectfulness and civil discourse that he demands of others, I just don't see how this rises above the notability threshold, let alone merits a section in his biography.

Now controversies are a whole different matter, and I'd be all for it if somebody would draw up an account of the positions Winer has taken on a whole raft of controversial matters. I wouldn't expect that anyone seriously thinks of the Calacanis incident as a controversy, though. ARK (talk) 08:05, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, you raise some good points and have made some really good changes to the article. The main "controversies" are 1) RSS 2.0, which infuriates people who prefer Atom and 2) the shutdown of Weblogs.com. As you say, any figure active publicly for many years will generate some controversy. What I don't understand is the strange jeering squads who turn hating Dave Winer into their team hobby. I think that is less common now than it was the RSS/Atom split was taking off, so maybe this article will quiet down as well. Any other voices want to be heard here? betsythedevine (talk) 14:12, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words.

Winer goes back a lot further than his "autocratic" RSS 2.0 release and the botched Weblogs.com shutdown. In 1996, for instance, he caused an "outpouring of rage" amongst his users when, out of the blue, he decided to drop a piece of software that had gained quite a following. But passions -- even the most legitimate indignation, of which there's been plenty throughout Winer's career as a platform vendor -- will eventually die down, and I'm not so sure the disgruntled developers of 2002 and the malcontent users of 2004 are still eager to have Winer's "disruptive and abusive" character exposed. I'd further assume that Wikipedia's novelty has worn off by now, and that some of those who were most vocal on Winer's failings in the past may have moved on to other things, such as Twitter.

I for one wouldn't be surprised if the removal of this section were to meet with a great big show of absolute, resounding indifference. ARK (talk) 00:29, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

I have just removed the Relationship to the public section as it only consisted of self-published opinions, which aren't admissible per WP:RS.

As an eventual substitute for this section, I propose an examination of what Winer has done as a platform vendor, much of which users and fellow developers have found irritating, and what he has said as a commentator, much of which other commentators have disagreed with, sometimes pointedly. Allegations about Winer's moral character ("irascible", "abusive", "obnoxious" etc.), ought not to be the focus of such an examination, I believe. ARK (talk) 11:10, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

P.S. A few days ago I moved the reference to Winer's great-uncle Arno Schmidt to Family background and education and the Calacanis incident to News coverage and interviews. The Relations to the public eventually consisted only in Bray and O'Reilly's allegations versus the favourable quotes included to mitigate those allegations. ARK (talk) 18:00, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

ACM paper on early blogging

I recently delivered a conference paper that has a few observations on Winer's involvement in the emergence of early blogging. As author of the piece I may need to abstain from working it into article. At a minimum, I think it should go into the "Coverage and interviews" section, though. Thanks for taking a look.

Vital statistics:

• Ammann, Rudolf (2009). "Jorn Barger, the NewsPage network and the emergence of the weblog community". Proceedings of the 20th ACM conference on hypertext and hypermedia. Torino, Italy: ACM. pp. 279-288. doi:10.1145/1557914.1557962. ISBN 978-1-60558-486-7. http://tawawa.org/ark/p/jorn-barger-community.html. Retrieved 2009-07-15. 

ARK (talk) 17:37, 15 July 2009 (UTC)