Talk:Bob Woodward

Woodward article revisions

As has been done previously, I would like to disclose first that my name is Evelyn Duffy and I am one of Bob Woodward's research assistants.

I have deleted or corrected several flatly incorrect biographical details, including information about Bob Woodward's parents and the correct spelling of Wheaton, IL. I also removed references (as well as a now-inaccurate link) to Bob Woodward serving as assistant managing editor at the Washington Post. I have changed them to reflect his current title, associate editor.

Additionally, I would like to note that the fourth bullet point under the heading 'Criticisms of content' is vague and insufficiently sourced. ‘Critics complain’ and ‘some believe’ are generic phrases that do not allow for follow-up. Rather than simply delete the bullet point, I thought I should bring this to the editors’ attention and inquire about the best way to address the issue. Maggie3027 (talk) 17:10, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi Evelyn, thanks for your input and your candor. I appreciate your input on some of the factual errors in this article, and I understand your concerns with the weasle words used in the criticisms section. I'm sure an agreeble re-wording of those statements can be found, though I will try and look at that more closely at a later date. However, after reviewing your recent edits I couldn't help but notice that there was more to it than what you describe above, including alot of pretty major revisions of sections that are critical of Woodward. I am not the author of most of those sections, nor am I perfectly knowledgeable of them, so I am in no position to comment on the validity of most of these revisions. However, I would caution you, given your admitted affiliation with Woodward, to do your best in keeping a NPOV with these edits.

One thing I have reverted is your deletion of the first bulleted criticism of Woodward, regarding Deep Throat and the argument that Deep Throat is a fictional character created by Woodward out of several of his sources. It seems that your argument for deleting it is that it is already covered by the Deep Throat article. Unfortunately I don't find this to be an adequate reason to delete it enirely. I can understand not going over it in great detail all over again, but there should be some discussion of this criticism in the section on criticisms of Woodward. In any case, rather than reverting your entire edit, I tried to re-write the bullet a little bit to read better. (Morethan3words (talk) 16:02, 10 December 2008 (UTC))

Thanks for the advice. Over the past several months, I have observed that the Wikipedia entry for Bob Woodward was structured in such a way as to make serious research difficult. I also noticed that the page, which serves as a very public record of Woodward’s life and career, offered an incomplete account of his books and was non-chronological, cast in an often one-sided light, and poorly sourced. According to the article message box at the top of the site, extensive work needed to be done to add reliable references and citations for verification.

Encouraged by Wikipedia’s suggestion to “Be Bold,” I have extensively edited the entry. The changes I’ve made reflect a great deal of time spent putting events in order and carefully quoting (and confirming quotes from) documented sources.

In the interest of transparency, as noted above, I am Evelyn Duffy, Bob Woodward’s research assistant, and have made these changes with his knowledge. Editing this entry, however, has been a painstaking exercise in balance and fairness. I have made every effort to ensure that criticism and differing viewpoints are represented and well-documented in the appropriate sections. I have specifically included criticism (with sources ranging from presidents to scholars) that was missing before. I hope and believe you will agree the resulting entry is stronger for these edits. Maggie3027 (talk) 00:24, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi Evelyn, thank you very much for all of your work, it is obvious that you have spent a great deal of time on this re-write and I commend you for your hard work and also very much appreciate it. As I am sure you have noticed, I have reverted your edit. Please do not take offense, I did not revert because of any overall objection to the work you have put into this article, rather I have reverted for a more mechanical reason. Because your re-write is so broad and extensive, it is difficult to go through and see precisely what changes you have made. I assume that your re-write was done using a word processor and then cut and paste into wiki's editor for ease of editing. What I am hoping you can do for us all is to re-enter your edits but do so in a series of smaller edits (i.e., enter in part of your re-write, save the change, then enter in more, save, etc.) so that we can better see what changes you have made. I realize this may not be easy to do given that you have changed the very format of the article, but there should be some way of breaking up the edit to make it easier for us to see what was changed and how. Again, thank you very much for your work and I look forward to working with you to make this a clearer and more accurate article. (Morethan3words (talk) 05:32, 7 February 2009 (UTC))

Morethan3words, thank you for explaining your revert. I had hoped the Wikipedia community would be willing to look at the article as a whole, since it was the incomplete, incorrect and poorly documented nature of the whole article that inspired a re-write in the first place. I also thought inputting my revisions of the article in its entirety best showed its new, balanced nature, showcasing positive and negative views of Woodward where appropriate and otherwise taking a neutral tone throughout the piece. As you mention, I did change the fundamental format and organization of the article, so the thought of making piecemeal changes was counterintuitive to me. I believe doing so would be confusing to any of the researchers (from high school students writing term papers to professionals in journalism) and casual readers who access Woodward’s entry on a daily basis.

Since Wikipedia offers the excellent tool of comparing old and new versions of any given page, I’m not certain I understand what made a revert necessary. It was discouraging too, of course, given the four or five hours it took to input the re-write, put nearly 100 footnotes into the right format and go through the entire article to make sure there were as many appropriate internal links as possible.

However, if the ‘Compare selected versions’ function on the History page does not suffice, I will re-do each section at a time so that you are better able to see the changes I’ve made. I will begin with the intro paragraphs, “Early Life and Career”, “Career Recognition and Awards”, and “Criticism”.

Let’s work on this together and get it right. Woodward gets persistent, regular requests for info on himself, and I’m committed to making his Wikipedia entry – the most accessible public record – accurate, comprehensive and balanced. Maggie3027 (talk) 16:25, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I've made the changes I mentioned above. Please note that I've deleted nothing else, so the new sections will appear repetitive for now. Please provide any feedback you can. Maggie3027 (talk) 16:41, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Great thank you. I know it may seem counterintuitive to break up the edits, but I requested it because when a big change like this is crammed into a single edit, it makes the compare screen very long and a little unwieldy, especially when one breaks up sections and moves the content around to multiple locations in the article. Whereas if it is broken up into smaller edits, it is easier to concentrate on each one.

Unfortunately I don't have time to look at it very closely tonight, but I will try to do so as soon as I get a chance. In the mean time, I am wondering if perhaps we should work on this using a sandbox on one of our userspaces, that way we can get close to a consensus on the format and content and then import over to the actual article, what do you think? In either case, I think it would be valuable to request a peer review, as I must admit I am no expert on Wiki's preferred formatting style. (Morethan3words (talk) 22:03, 9 February 2009 (UTC))

Proposed re-write

There is currently a proposed re-write to this article, as initially discussed above. For all those interested in participating in the re-write of this article, you can find our sandbox here. (Morethan3words (talk) 06:38, 17 February 2009 (UTC))

Comment on the Tone of the Article and Repeated Content

I am not an editor or anything, but I thought I would comment on this article. I am concerned that it does not follow the neutral tone rule. This passage is an example: "Woodward's work for the Post and his books, which penetrate deeply into various Washington, D.C. institutions and seven presidencies, are often greeted with initial skepticism, criticism, and even denials. But time and time again, after the record, memoirs and various government investigations are completed, his work has proved to be accurate." It reads like the back flap of a dust jacket. I don't mean that as an insult or sarcasm--I mean it quite literally.

Also, I noted that some of the content is repeated. For example, the quote about "measurable cerebral activity" being absent is used twice. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.211.149.221 (talk) 14:34, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree, the article needs a lot of work. Unfortunately, I lack the resources and the only other people who seem to be interested in improving the article are Woodward's various research assistants, who seem to favor the dust jacket approach. (Morethan3words (talk) 16:47, 6 May 2009 (UTC))

Criticism Sections

Really? 3 criticism sections? Having one is usually frowned upon, but here we have three.--158.59.193.38 (talk) 16:46, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I've tried to consolidate the criticism sections. I've made the last two sections a subsection of the first criticism section. Nishkid64 _{(Make articles, not wikidrama)} 17:59, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Personal

"He has two daughters. One lives in San Francisco and is gay."

I have deleted the second sentence above--I fail to see the relevance or fairness of describing (very vaguely) details about just the one daughter. Either describe where both daughters live and what their activities are (if they are indeed relevant to the father's story) and relate why each one's sexual orientation is of pertinence to the bio.--65.210.45.81 (talk) 14:18, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Portions duplicate Woodward official biography

I would like to preface this by saying that I'm sure that none of the following is malicious, but rather is a misunderstanding on someone's part -- possibly mine -- of what is appropropriate in the Wikipedia community. Quite by accident, I noticed that extensive portions of this page repeat verbatim the text on Bob Woodward's official biography page. That official biography page at the bottom states "All Content Copyright By Bob Woodward". This suggests to me that one or more of the following is true about this article:

1. Someone has violated Mr. Woodward's copyright by duplicating the content here on Wikipedia without authorization.
2. Mr. Woodward or his associates have edited the page themselves, which potentially violates Wikipedia's style on a neutral point of view.
3. Mr. Woodward or his associates have borrowed the text from the Wikipedia article for their site, which is not itself a violation of Wikipedia's policies (since its content is considered public domain), but if this is the case, they should note that instead of claiming copyright for it.

Or maybe I'm being overly sensitive here. What does the community think? GeekyDad2004 (talk) 23:37, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

For #3, unless someone knows how to easily look at the history of the Woodward page (which I don't), I'm not sure how we can check it or even who to refer it to in the case they have stolen from Wiki and called it their own. I think it more likely #s 1 and/or 2. I know that Woodward's interns have, on occasion, attempted to edit the page. Having said that I also note that they have, on at least 2 occasions, been very good at identifying themselves to the community before making their edits. A while back I tried, unsuccessfully, to work with one such user, but ultimately her editing proved too biased and the effort faded when I confronted her about it.

Moving forward, if an editor has the gumption, I would suggest some mild re-writes of the offending portions to keep the spirit of the content while getting us out of the copyright violation territory. (Morethan3words | talk) 23:45, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Disambiguation

I was rather surprised to be led here when I typed in "Bob Woodward"; I was thinking of Robert Burns Woodward. I think "Bob Woodward" ought to lead to the disambiguation page, instead of straight here. How about you? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sammy1339 (talk • contribs) 02:20, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

2013 Dispute with the Obama Administration

This section is ridiculously oversized, far out of proportion to its importance to covering Woodward's career. Blatant WP:RECENTISM. 69.73.47.181 (talk) 06:02, 2 March 2013 (UTC)