Talk:Matthew Steen

First of talk pages for improvements/verifications/documentations

Thank you so very much wikipedia biog editors and unseen/unknown/anonymous staff. As you can read I've resurfaced from the underground and have only been in the ethernet for six weeks. Before that I had to fly under the radar as y'all can probably figure out from the content of this bio. I need help though and it is important for future researchers and historians after we are gone to capture the fact, detail, nuance and social context of the WUO. After all, we (all of us) were young Americans looking for truth and to change the world, like generations before us and those to follow. However, in specific I need to gain further access to microfilmed records of print media and video from broadcast in order to present a fuller, more descriptive snapshot for the purposes of this page. I need to gain access to cbs60 minutes video and transcript for my national lead segment on 60 Minutes in November 1977 (see WUO wiki page - which I probably fucked up, I'm sorry). Y'all have to realize how very long it has been plus my recovery from the repression and tenor of the times of the late sixties and seventies. I am not wealthy, few of us ever were, so, consider the absolute sacrifice of these people interrupting lives and loves and risking all to put forth the proposition that we can be a great society. Changing weather, changing institutions forty years later. So, please help with this folks.99.127.230.217 (talk) 05:29, 18 April 2012 (UTC)99.127.230.217 (talk) 01:23, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Wiki editors unknown for the links and disambiguations so far. Thanks for creating this article stub biography. Please keep doing your assessments and ratings. This needs to go through the hard way.99.127.230.217 (talk) 05:29, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Made some improvements to stub article with sections, eliminating link rot, greater uniformity in citations, syntax, typos, etc. I know I've work to do on this article, especially greater separation of issues, actions and the like. I am completely reworking the lede. How do I get the right-side box into the article, the box with short bio info??? Anybody out there??? Help. Weathervane13 20:18, 16 April 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Weathervane13 (talk • contribs)

Stub article has been completely revamped. Has sections and is chronological.

How do I get to start article??Weathervane13 07:05, 17 April 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Weathervane13 (talk • contribs)

OK, I'm getting the hang of Wiki MOS, overlinks, citation conformity, developing the lede and overall structure. Lede still needs work. Need to learn how to change fonts, use italics, indents, restyling section heads, activating article links and moving stub article up the assessment scale. Thanks folks anonymous that are helping at WIKI. Weathervane13 17:48, 19 April 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Weathervane13 (talk • contribs)

• Well, for one we do not indent often, only to set aside a larger quote, and for this we use a series of colons such as you used for your above post. We also don't change fonts in articles from the default, so we don't need to worry about that. Section heads are done by using a series of == on each side of the section title. Italicized text is created by placing '' on each side of the text, and bold done by placing ''' . The first thing that could be done right now is going through and removing any red Wikilinks. Also many of the citations appear to be available online. Make sure that they are hyper-linked with the full URL (including "http://"). Also some of the references need to be specified. For example you cannot just list "santa barbara news-press.com/archives", rather you need to point to the specific location in those archives. I am also not sure about your use of sources such as : "fbi.gov/classified /unreleased FOIA files". Not only is that not a valid URL, but are you referring to classified government documents? If so, those should be removed as that would be a violation of a serious criminal offense, and against Wikipedia policies.

Those things should give you a good start on improving the article. -Aaron Booth (talk) 18:45, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Great! OK on the indents/colons. I'm reading Wiki MOS for some help and paying attention to Wiki advice. OK on the fonts, I was just curious as I didn't see a practical way of doing it.

How do I create a pipe from my keyboard; it's been years. ASCII character?

Next, italics solved OK. I removed overlinks problems. I read that redlinks degrade the quality of articles, so I'll go thru it. Are a few allowed, like less than ten in an article this length? -- I'm editing the lede and sections content to improve internal quality, form and ? Hyperlinks . . . I have to look up how to activate hyperlinks, are these the bluelinks?

You are absolutely correct re classified documents and I'll delete references to them until the FBI has actually released these files to me under the Freedom of Information Act. Thanks for that. Cite locations -- working on it; some of this material is located in university archives and newspaper archives. I have the year and, usually the month, but not the exact day the referenced event appeared in print.

Thanks so much Aaron, anonymous Wiki editor. Am a quick learner, just haven't been in the ethernet since 1996, before email. Bear with me. Weathervane13 23:16, 19 April 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Weathervane13 (talk • contribs)

Wikifolks -- I read this stub article was nominated for a speed delete??? This nomination must be contested . . . While the article is in need of further edit to the lede and body content, it would seem this information provides missing contextual information, dates, names, locations, descriptions, analysis and cites/refs.

Also, the nature of the subject matter seems to have historical import, albeit at a low level in the Wiki hierarchy of articles. Granted. However, the unique items ---

    Only CBS 60 Minutes Interview of former Weatherman leading to the emergence of   the entire Weather Underground seems significant;
    Explanation of WUO theory of white-skin privilege is relevant;
    An original member of WUO seems significant;
    None of the Above ballot option seems significant;
    Throwing a tear gas bomb at Vice-President Spiro Agnew is newsworthy;
    Bonding out Tupac Shakur's mother is noteworthy;
    Handling the legal case of the only person ever convicted of peacetime mutiny

in US history, USS Columbia Eagle Alvin Glatowski, with a legal cite is worthwhile;

    Any number of other items in the body of the stub article are valid???

Anyways. I'll keep working to shorten the article, with the aim to elegance, I hope. So, thanks for the help so far. Weathervane13 20:02, 21 April 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Weathervane13 (talk • contribs)

Work to be Done on B article

I forgot to mention above that I fully realize the improvements to the lede and body of article that need to be made. I am striving for some elegance and compliance with Wiki MOS, and my responsibility to adhere to Wiki assessment guidelines. I need to tighten it up but am keeping a new eye on Wiki written and archived advice. I've only been doing this for two months now. Last time on a computer was in the late 90's, when I had to disappear again for a while, you've read about it. So, please, please, please, as JB would say, bear with me. If I make a mistake, it will be rectified. Please don't be shy folks if you want to or need to edit this article. That's what it is there for. I won't get mad, unless you make it hurt too much. Seriously, anyone who's interested, go for it. You folks are much better at this than I, but I's cathchin' up . . . I am going to do few edits on other articles, but only if I can ref/cite or remove bad English. Thanks again.Weathervane13 (talk) 00:18, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Request to Use WLP B-Class banner

Instructions say to discuss changes to banners and parameters. OK. I though Wikipedia changed this automatically with bots (?) after an article progressed through an assessment stage? So, before I f with it, I'll wait to hear from kind Wiki editors. Oh, I'll be editing other and maybe even random articles as I become accustomed to Wiki formats and MOS and etiquette and real egalitarianism! With peer review and support, what more can a soul request! Also need to remove some old AFC/Stub things at the bottom of talk page. Let me know what to do or not to do. Also have a bit of research to do gathering cites/refs to flesh out that part. Thanks.Weathervane13 (talk) 06:00, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Reclassification of Article to Start from B-Class

I need some help here folks. I've provided substantial cites/refs re subject matter. These cites are certainly valid as all news articles cites, Eugene Register, Oregonian, Seattle Times, New York Times, San Francisco Weekly all specifically refer to Steen. I have, in the last week, paid attention to cite reliability as a priority. I have obtained the actual articles, why cannot Wiki??? Do you want me lose cites and refs from the article?? Do you want me to just forget about it?? I assume your hcard tag would unearth these references. I also think the article could be considered controversial, although I've not yet seen vandalism, which surprises me. I have provided specificity in order to improve reliability. I have removed certain parts that may not be able to be backed by reference. I've refrained from citing other living persons in the article. With regard to the Obama references, this person is the last person standing, or still alive beyond the principals mentioned. The 60 Minutes reference is pristine and totally unassailable. I've used Yasni to dig up archived articles. What more can be done. The story is certainly dramatic, of interest, has notability and probably too many references. So, can you folks provide me with some guidance, suggestions or advice. Don't be shy. Again, nearly every offered fact is supported by the record. What more can I do? Is the writing bad or deplorable? The article is superior to the original stub article, yes? Help!!!--Weathervane13 (talk) 05:44, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Start Class Article and Speedy Delete Protection

I looked up Start and realized the protection offered by Wiki from speedy delete, my fate the first time around last month. Thank you. I'll just have to work my way back up the assessment scale. So be it. I think I was classified B to circulate the article temporarily for feedback from the ethernet. Fine. This is, incidentally, my original intention. Posting this thru AFC and taking the hard road. So, thanks for the advice to relax (deadline) a bit. Will simply go slow and rework this article, the lede and body, to cut it down, consolidate, lose bad refs/cites and unsupportable claim. FBI files in this case has not been released, perhaps, for some obvious reason. Anyway. Wiki has been very helpful. You can tell I've been slowly learning. Thanks again for your wisdom and help.--Weathervane13 (talk) 21:37, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

At the moment I only see 5-6 valid citations. The rest are URLS that do not exist. Some of them could likely be fixed by locating the specific URL to the page that you got the cited information from. You seem to be trying to cite potential sources that may exist, or you know exist but don't know where, and are trying to format this as some sort of URL hybrid. -Aaron Booth (talk) 22:23, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Continuing article edits

am still working on article and actively soliciting comments, advice, opinion.

will be doing heavy edits to internal content to shorten the article to a more appropriate length; ditto with lede. laptop is still dead, no time, busy, busy, busy organizing, etc in the City. Weathervane13 (talk) 22:51, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Capitalization of headings and sub-headings

The Wikipedia style for capitalizing headings and sub-headings is to use "sentence case" instead of "title case", e.g.,

Important things to know about this subject

not:

Important Things to Know About This Subject

This may be unfamiliar to many editors who believe that or have been taught that "title case is the right way to capitalize headings". It isn't the "right way", it is one style. Wikipedia has, for better or worse, chosen to follow a different style, i.e., capitalize the heading or and sub-heading the same way you would capitalize any sentence:

• capitalize the first word,
• capitalize any proper nouns (people, places, organizations), and
• begin all other words with lower case letters.

See WP:MSH for more information. Ground Zero | t 00:35, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Also, Wikipedia:MOS#Abbreviations says: "The letters in an acronym or an initialism are generally not separated by periods (full stops) or blank spaces (GNP, NORAD, OBE, GmbH). Periods and spaces that were traditionally required have now dropped out of usage (PhD is now preferred over Ph.D. and Ph. D.)." Ground Zero | t 01:40, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Why and how is this article in Main space?

I tried to fix some of your cites, but got nowhere, they are just fragments. Impossible to find anything or verify anything.  :- ) Don 02:42, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Recent suggestions and comments in July 2012 on start article

 Thank you for your kind comments re MOS.  Will fix the problem I created.
 Oh, and thanks for the heads-up re acronyms and dots!!

 And the research done on the references.  Hmmm . . . these footnote references
 were non-conforming to Wiki standards when first submitted to WikiWorld as
 an AFC.  I then went about conforming media sources to cite standards to better
 enable researchers.  Some were never scanned into the system in the 1950's ~ 1980's
 but are archived at the sources cited; some are pay-only (NY Times); some are
 overseas and/or in foreign language(Japan/Europe)only; and some will need redaction
 or removal ~ no doubt.  However, the crux of the article is clearly authentic and
 has already been verified by other Wiki editors, which is why this is a start-class
 article and no longer a stub.

 Minimal research would reveal "60 Minutes" as 'real'.  As well as the articles re
 WUO and membership lists.  And the news articles from the late sixties and early
 seventies in New York Times and news dailies in Seattle and Portland and SF.
 S0 ~~ I don't know.  Am slowly editing article to meet Wiki MOS standards and
 collecting further documentation through yasni.com and other sources.  If I can
 get it, then so can anybody else who has been properly trained for basic research.

 Anyways, thanks for your effort.  Can always use help.  It will help if and when
 the FBI releases my files . . .  This is a 2+ year project but no time lately, 
 lots of volunteer social work for the homeless in SF.     --208.70.28.126 (talk) 21:18, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I hear quacking

I took over 1/2 hour trying to match a citation in the Boston Globe every way possible and nothing. Many of the URL's are not even close to the real URL. SantaBarbaraNewsandReveiw.com is very unlikely, (I used to read it) they went out of business before the internet was invented by Al Gore. I will have a crack at the Santa Barbara News and Review. What has 3 letters, starts with a C and ends with a D?
 Looks like a duck to me --  :- ) Don 01:32, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

This whole article looks like a love letter to Steen, who seems to consider Wiki as his own personal autobiography platform. The article has a self-important, congratulatory tone that suggests several ligaments must have been pulled while patting oneself on the back. There are multiple topic headings with zero content, as if Steen is encouraging others to fill in the blanks (the article is not supposed to be a sandbox). As Dcshank noted, many of the citations are dead or are not pertinent to the reference. Every detail of this guy's life is being recounted, though I think potty training was skipped. ;-) Clearly the article has merit and should be on Wiki, but as is it's little more than a platform for Steen to trumpet his "accomplishments" and wax poetic about the WUO's idealistic machinations. The following sentence wouldn't belong on the WUO page, let alone one of it's members: "The desire of Weatherman rank and file to re-engage at the community level, working to steward institutional changes wrought by the political, cultural and racial upheavals arising from the paradox of America in the 1960s and 1970s, was an overarching reason, the aching need to embed a new social paradigm in the national fabric now that the war was over." This sentence and many others in the article are the very reason why Wiki has the WP:AUTO policy. If everything on the page now was moved to a sandbox and Steen (or someone else) worked to get it cited correctly (so rigorous fact-checking could take place) it might be useful as an outline to rewrite the entire article from scratch - by someone else BESIDES Steen. As it is now, it's very obviously Steen's self-aggrandizing autobiography and much, much too long. PS Dcshank, is the answer "cod"? ;-) Supertheman ^(talk) 08:25, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Re old citations

True, the SB News and Review is out of business, being bought out by Santa Barbara Independent. So, how shall I cite

this now-defunct publication and source material.  Which I too read for many years.  Insofar as Boston Globe, type in
keywords Agnew and tear gas grenade and 1971 and Boston.  You may want to quack at the 60 Minutes interview.  Seriously,
all URL's are valid maybe with the exception just noted, from 100+ citations.  Any comments on how to validate source
material not scanned and available on internet that is free and not pay as you go??? You can also go to the University
of California public archives located in Davidson Library on campus.  Are you just lazy and can't get off a terminal??

Did you think source material is only located on the internet???--208.70.28.126 (talk) 20:04, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

== Cleaning article of linkrot/how to cite lccn's?

How do I cite lccn's to remove and guard against linkrot? I'll ask this again in Teahouse. Will be going thru main article to remove self-reflective observations previously noted on this talk page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Weathervane13 (talk • contribs) 19:12, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Anonymous edits

I have been continuing to clean up after an anonymous editor who has benn adding unnecessary repeated links (see WP:REPEATLINK), and has been adding periods in acronyms (see [[WP:ACRONYM -- Wikipedia uses the style "FBI", not "F.B.I."). I have noted these policies in the edit summaries, but the anon editor continues. I will start reverting these edits instead of cleaning them up. Ground Zero | t 10:29, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Reverting Anonymous Edits

You are correct Ground Zero. Such edits will stop. Was not sure how to address the problem you pointed out. Read your talk page and some Strunk and am now straight on this problem which will no longer continue. Thank you for your patience and warning about my persistent fixation on this.99.127.230.217 (talk) 16:28, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

NPOV Tag Removed

This was an arbitrary edi. with a negative pov and a political axe to grind. You point to npovs without description beyond the single correction that was made. Tag is removed. Weathervane13 02:09, 29 December 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Weathervane13 (talk • contribs)

Neutrality questioned

The Fred Hampton section was so biased, it was a joke. Just reading the beginning of the article shows it is biased, and likely is throughout. The third paragraph reads like a burlesque. One of the footnotes justifying the bias isn't even live -- it links to nothing. I'm not about to go through this and have edits reverted by true believers.Shemp Howard, Jr. (talk) 03:24, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

I think there are a lt of problems with this artcle. It sounds, n many places, like it is trying to build up ths guy into something really big. I have removed a section that claimed his actions "foreshadowed" Edward Snowden. Really. There is also an unclear reference to Michelle Obama. It doesn't say they even ever met, so why is it there? Ground Zero | t 12:24, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

January 2014 overhaul

this article continues to face a lot of problems. I have been editing vigorously, but feel that it still needs a lot of work. It really reads like it was written by Steen or by a fan.

• It does not look like it was written by someone trying to be objective.
• There is extraneous information about people, places and organizations that is not really about Steen.
• There were attempts to make Steen seem more important by drawing tangential references to people like Michelle Obama and Edward Snowden.
• Many references were to other Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia canot be used as a reference for itself.
• The language is "colourful" or journalistic, e.g., referring ton him as "the aging activist", rather than factual and encyclopedic.
• There are lots of claims that are not supported by references to reliable sources.
• Excessive linking keeps creeping back in. WP:OVERLINK.
• Excessive information is being packed into sub-headings. WP:HEAD.

Ground Zero | t 15:47, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Will be cleaning this article of NPOV and other minor problems.

BTW, the foreshadowing Snowden reference is accurate in that the FBI Media raid was the first confirmed instance of illegal government violations of constitutional rights to privacy (wiretaps, mail openings, 'black bag' burglaries) with the tools of the secretive COINTELPRO apparatus. Thank you for reviewing article with a critical eye. 70.90.165.209 (talk) 00:55, 19 February 2014 (UTC)