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Neutrality

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I think it's pretty obvious what the problem is but since I added the NPOV tag then I'm posting this thread here. This article was clearly crafted up to promote this person's campaign, and most of the material is clearly inappropriate for a Wikipedia article. This article should focus on Harry Braun the person, i.e. facts about him and what sources have said about him. His political views are of course relevant and important, but we can't use an encyclopedic biography to write in length about those views instead. Because that is not neutral. — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 18:14, 18 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Harry W Braun III:, you're adding completely irrelevant information right now. See WP:COATRACK: "A coatrack article is a Wikipedia article that ostensibly discusses its nominal subject, but has been edited to make a point about one or more tangential subjects. The nominal subject is treated as if it were an empty coat-rack, and is obscured by the "coats". The existence of a "hook" in a given article is not a good reason to "hang" irrelevant and biased material there."

This article is supposed to be a biography, but you actually removed what little biographical info this article had, and added an inordinate amount of irrelevant info, including an entire section for "Hydrogen History". At this point at least 85% of this article's content needs to go. If you think these things are important then you can write about them on your website. This is not the right place. — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 21:05, 18 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Jeraphine, I've attempted to further trim the article back.[1] In terms of bytecounts, the wikitext is now 12KB at the time of this comment, whereas back on 18th August at 2100z the bytecount was 32KB, so we've cut out about 62% of the bytes. However, a lot of sourcing-footnotes have been added to the wikitext, so in terms of human-visible body-text wordcount, we've gone from ~3900 words down to ~700 words, which is a reduction by ~83% of the verbosity-content. Looks like your estimate of 85% content-reduction was pretty dern close.  :-)     Can you please review the present state of mainspace, and see whether the warning-tags can be removed? Specifically WP:NPOV, WP:RECENTISM, and perhaps WP:COI tagging -- Braun has been given usertalk instructions about sticking to the talkpage, rather than directly editing mainspace, so maybe a talkpage top-tag about COI (as opposed to a mainspace top-tag) will be enough from now on. That said, please don't remove the AfD tag, that one needs to stay, of course; there is also an add-more-cats tag, tucked away at the bottom, which should stay. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 10:57, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, thanks for doing that math. You're right, the tags don't seem to apply anymore and I removed them. Oh, thanks for doing the rewrite! — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 14:59, 25 August 2015 (UTC) (MelanieN, you too! Good work. — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 15:01, 25 August 2015 (UTC))[reply]
Will the endless powers of personal computers to augment our innate human capacities never cease??? I like WP:CALC, I find it soothing.  ;-)     Thanks for yoinking the tags, and if you see anything else that needs fixing, please be WP:BOLD, o'course. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 15:04, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is this correct?

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@75.108.94.227: @Harry W Braun III: Is the following sentence, which 75.108 just added to the article, actually correct? Braun is organizing[citation needed] his 2016 campaign as a Constitutional Convention (see Article V of the U.S. Constitution), as a means of attempting to ratify his proposed Constitutional amendment. My understanding is that his Constitutional Convention campaign is an entirely separate initiative of his, aimed at changing the way America is governed - while his presidential campaign is being run under the existing electoral system. --MelanieN (talk) 14:26, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I pulled that sentence from the overly-promotional bit, so I believe it is correct, since I believe Harry wrote it himself.[2] But I'm happy to have it yanked out for the moment, until we can confirm one way or the other. It's not WP:NOTEWORTHY since it isn't sourced to a wiki-reliable journalist that commented on it, but it seemed like an interesting factoid that could be justified as WP:ABOUTSELF. I found it an interesting factoid at least. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 15:00, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Earlier I asked him whether he was running for the Democratic nomination, or if he was running as an independent or write-in. He replied that he is running for the Democratic nomination.[3] I take that as meaning that he is running under the existing electoral system. So I have no idea what he meant when he said "Braun has organized his 2016 presidential campaign as a Constitutional Convention that is specifically focused on the ratification of the 28-word Democracy Amendment he has written and proposed on the Democracy Amendment USA." In fact that doesn't really make sense, or if it does it would take way too much explanation.
I was going to suggest a sentence like this - His campaign is focused on replacing the existing fossil-fuel-based economy with a hydrogen-based economy, using solar-powered "windships" to create the hydrogen. A secondary theme is his call for a constitutional convention to ratify his Democracy Amendment, which would make "all laws, federal legislation, presidential executive orders, and judicial decisions" subject to popular majority vote. But this would be putting words in his mouth, because he has not publicly said what his campaign is about, and his website is not yet live. Bottom line, I would suggest we simply delete the part about the constitutional convention from the "2016 campaign" section, and I will do that. But we should probably have a short paragraph under the "political campaigns" section about his proposed Democracy Amendment. I can base it on the organization he founded to promote it, and support it by the item from the Des Moines Register. I'll work on that. --MelanieN (talk) 17:56, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I added it. I was biting my tongue, because (original research follows) his plan for how the amendment could pass is unconstitutional. He thinks all it takes is a majority of registered voters in 38 states to mail his "ballot" in to their state, and the amendment will pass and be ratified. He cites Article V of the U.S. Constitution, but Article V says something different entirely: it says constitutional conventions have to be called by the state legislatures.[4] But it's his proposal, let him make it. --MelanieN (talk) 18:21, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Harry left a note on my usertalk, explaining that his 2016 campaign really is going to have the focus around his article-5-convention plan. I've had some experience with art-5-discussions in real life, and while I don't disagree with you that Harry may not fully understand the specifics of the language used by the founders, I'm not 100% sure his interpretation is incorrect. Like some other bits of the Constitution, the exact parameters of an art-5-convention were clear in the minds of the founders, but are obscure in the practical details to us. In those days, the phrase "united states" was literally interpreted, aka to mean "the states united". Anyways, per WP:NOTFORUM we'll leave this one alone for the moment (or move to usertalk if you like). Once Braun officially announces his campaign in a few weeks, and puts up his official statements about the goals of his 2016 effort, we can further flesh out that section, albeit we have to be careful not to overstep the bounds of WP:UNDUE and WP:NOTNEWS. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 01:32, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

relationship of Braun'04 / Braun'12 / Braun'16 to other candidacies

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P.S. I found a list of the Democrats who have registered to run for president. There are 19 of them: Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley, Brad Winslow, Willie Wilson, Robby Wells, Jim Webb, Michael Steinberg, Doug Shreffler, Lloyd Keslo, Lincoln Chafee, Willie Carter, Andy Caffrey, Harry Braun, Jeff Boss, Morrison Bonpasse, and Howell Astor. I very much doubt that all 19 of them are going to have Wikipedia articles. And although we keep reading that there are 17 candidates for the Republican nomination, there are actually 31; the other 14 do not get covered anywhere and are also not likely to have articles here. That's the only place I have found Braun's candidacy even passing-mentioned in press coverage, and we can't use it; it's in the Examiner which is a forbidden source here. --MelanieN (talk) 17:56, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There are, at present, 139 republican candidates, and 96 democrats.[5] There are a dozen Greens, a dozen Constitution Party candidates, and two dozen Libertarian candidates (not even counting former gov of NM who was the stardard-bearer last time around). Of those roughly-300-people with formally declared potus major-party-campaigns, only two dems have raised over five million bucks (Braun is not one of them) to date, and even among the vastly more competitive repub nom field, "only" around a dozen candidates have raised over five million bucks (and as of the June 30th FEC cutoff Trump was not one of them... he's using his personal fortune instead to get his campaign kickstarted). A very large percentage of the 300-odd people running, who do NOT have five million bucks, are doing so as a lark... or as a joke slash Profound Statement... but some of the not-yet-megadonor-backed candidates have a serious purpose, Braun very much included.
These are just the people running as dems. If you count independents, we have bluelinks for quite a large number of people already. The point of the list here, is that Braun falls among the top ten dem candidates for 2016, at about the same level as Lessig (who also has not officially announced -- nor even filed and thus Lessig is still inside scare-parens). 75.108.94.227 (talk) 01:32, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
All I can say is Sheesh!! Thank God they aren't all trying to have Wikipedia articles. --MelanieN (talk) 01:57, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I suspect 99% of them *are* hoping to have a wikipedia article written about them. Top ten website in the universe, and all that. And in fact, by wiki-tradition of sticking to NPOV, we do list all FEC-filed presidential candidates, since the FEC is a wiki-reliable source: an official agency of an internationally-recognized government. See potus'12, potus'08, etc. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 11:41, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
RE "We do list all FEC-filed presidential candidates" - well, sort of. Based on that 2012 link, "list" is exactly what we do: we have a list of names and filing dates. But unless they were on at least one primary ballot, they don't get anything more than that. I see that Harry Braun was included on that 2012 "list". I also see that, of the ones like him who were only "on the list" without being on any primary ballots, not a single one has a Wikipedia article. That should tell us something. Also, I don't see any evidence that "99% of them" are trying to have a Wikipedia article. This repeated insistence that "I must have a Wikipedia article so I will be listed on Facebook" seems to be unique to him. And frankly it's really off-putting, as if Wikipedia exists to promote his interests - or to allow him to spread The Truth. --MelanieN (talk) 15:43, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it comes partly from our BLP being a wiki-beginner who does not understand all the bazillion wiki-rules, plus also (and per usertalk conversations Harry understands this issue) is inherently a by-product of being a potus candidate... you are forced to constantly work to get name-recognition, and to get your message out, so it starts to become second nature after awhile, even though our BLP is mostly a researcher and not a professional politician. Anyways, I think we're starting to get a working relationship functioning, although I'd like to see User:Harry_W_Braun_III try their hand at proposing some changes, by making their own 'new section' here on the talkpage for areas where the wikipedia prose is lacking or otherwise deficient. That might be a bit easier and less-hair-raising to attempt, after the bangvoting at the AfD has finished, however.  ;-)     75.108.94.227 (talk) 22:50, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, the FEC-registered folks get added to a list of names with their FEC-form-two-hyperlinks, when there is little press-coverage. Braun is also on our 2004 list, back when article-naming-conventions were different. Sometimes such candidates get one or two hits, as the BLP in question did in 2012, and then those refs are simply added after the name methinks (which I just did for Braun'04 and Braun'12). In cases like Jeff Boss'12 there was some in-depth coverage of the campaign, in which case the candidate in question is added to the table-section with a pic plus a few sentences. Braun'12 and maybe Braun'04 could conceivably be stuck in the other-candidates-table, now that the refs specific to those campaigns have been added. But yeah, even in order to get added to the table-portion, the candidate in question needs to have more than just the FEC link in question, and usually needs to be a bluelink. Braun'04 is borderline, for being added to any such other-candidate-table (as opposed to list), since the refs there are 'listicles' but Braun'12 prolly could be added to the other-candidates-table along with Boss and Moseler, since he had a couple dedicated-to-his-campaign press-pieces. That said, I'm unfamiliar with the nuances of wiki-tradition here.

  Ping User:William S. Saturn, who seems to be maintaining the 2016-other-candidates-table in userspace, and also from seeing them around in the election-articles, likely knows something about the previous elections as well. William, can you fill us in on the other-candidate-table stuff? For instance, should there be dedicated redirects from Leah Lax to Democratic_Party_presidential_candidates,_2012#FEC-filed_candidates, since that candidate is not yet a bluelink, and is not otherwise mentioned in wikipedia? If so, what about candidates like Andy Caffrey IV who are redlinks, but have multiple possible redirect-targets, should we make a WP:DAB-page that mentions Andy Caffrey might be the judge from the early generations Andrew_Augustine_Caffrey but also might be Andy Caffrey IV, the more-recent candidate in CA'12 + CA'14 + USA'16?

  The particular BLP of this article, Harry Braun, is in the list for 2004 (no table utilized that year at the moment), in the list (but not yet the table) for 2012, and in the table (but not yet with any independent refs) for 2016. Are these all the right location, for this BLP, to be sitting in at present? 75.108.94.227 (talk) 22:50, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In the 2016 article, there is not yet a "table" (i.e., a table of people who were on a primary ballot) because there are not yet any primary ballots. I assume that as the election goes on, those who were on a ballot will get put into a table, and those who were not will get relegated to "the list". --MelanieN (talk) 23:00, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Side issue: Could you please stop referring to him as "the BLP"? I don't know anyone else who does that, and it is confusing even after you explained it. He is a human being; he is not a biography of a human being. Try "Mr. Braun" or "Harry" or "the subject" or "the candidate" or... well, pretty much anything that makes it clear you are talking about the person! --MelanieN (talk) 23:00, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Questions about sources

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Are these four (offline) sources about Braun or his book? Do they mention him or his book? Or are they merely about the potential of hydrogen? — Preceding unsigned comment added by ONUnicorn (talk • contribs)

  • Derek P. Gregory (Institute of Gas Technology), "The Hydrogen Economy," Scientific American, Vol. 228, No. 1, pp. 13-21, January 1973
  • T. Nejat Veziroglu and A. N. Protsenko, Hydrogen Energy Progress VII: Reviewing the Progress in Hydrogen Energy, Pergamon Press, New York, New York, October 1988
  • J. Pangborn, M. Scott and J. Sharer, "Technical Prospects for Commercial and Residential Distribution and Utilization of Hydrogen," Internal Journal of Hydrogen Energy, Vol. 2, pp. 431-445 1977
  • J. O'M. Bockris, "Hydrogen Economy," Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science), Vol. 176, No. 4041, p. 1323, June 23, 1972
Good catch. Those are in the third paragraph of the "Life and work" section, appended to the sentence about his "Phoenix Project" book - in fact they are positioned as if they were confirming "based on ideas outlined in Braun’s book". But in fact I doubt if any of them mention the book. I think they should all be pulled, and his book should be cited only to itself. --MelanieN (talk) 19:30, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I am going to delete these four sources. With the article currently at AfD, people will be checking the article for reliable sources - and those footnotes could give the false impression that these highly respectable sources have given coverage to him or his ideas, which is almost certainly not the case. (Oops, forgot to sign! MelanieN (talk) )
I agree. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 17:59, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Having not seen the contents of the publications in question myself, I agree they ought be removed from mainspace until we can WP:V what is in them. I will note that source#3 here is IJHE, see the IAHE-and-IJHE discussion below. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 20:24, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Reference format

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There is something puzzling about the reference format. References 5 through 14 do not appear in the text anywhere. Are they invisibilized, or what? --MelanieN (talk) 19:44, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That puzzled me earlier. They seem to be references appended to the end of things in the notes section, which in turn are cited in the text. However, in this article I don't see the need for a separation between notes and references. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 20:02, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Good sleuthing. I agree, that's really weird - both the notes-vs-references division, and the adding-references-to-notes thing. User:75.108.94.227 , did you do this? Can you undo it and set up normal, simple referencing? --MelanieN (talk) 21:15, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I am the culprit: User:DGG asked at the AfD page for the selected bibliography to be de-emphasized, saying it was WP:UNDUE to have it in the article-body. Unfortunately, it is technically impossible to nest <ref name=2000book>some paper title<ref name=2000publisher>buncha details</ref></ref> due to mediawiki limitation, so the "official" essay-trick for creating footnotes-with-footnotes-of-their-own, is to use Template:efn for the 2000book title-portion, and then keep using refs for the 2000publisher details-portion. I agree it is done awkwardly, and probably the exact bibliography-layout needs to be reconsidered, but I'd prefer to reconsider it after the AfD.  :-)     Thataway, if there is a bang-keep we can proceed on the basis of what exactly was bang-kept, and if not, then all this will be draftspaced at least temporarily. In any case, here is the selected-bibliography layout,[7] and here is the diff where I quick-inserted the efn-stuff.[8] 75.108.94.227 (talk) 02:13, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
there are multiple ways to format, all equally acceptable, but it is confusing if more than one at a time is used. Some of the more complicated formats, such as the one you mention, are probably not good choices and perhaps should never have been programmed. A great many over-elaborate structures have been programmed from time to time, basically on the principle of BecauseWeCan. If kept, I'll help find one that is suitable. DGG ( talk ) 04:49, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, thanks. There is a reason (in articles besides Harry Braun) for combining efn + refTags, which is to have something like this: factoid#1.[note#1] factoid#2.[note#2]. note#1: found in DGG'86 page 111.[ref#3] note#2: found in DGG'86 page 222.[ref#3] ref#3: Factoids, by DGG, 1986, Elsevier, volume 55, issue 66, pages 33-333 in: Proceedings of Factoids'86, San Diego. But agree that we don't need that here, I just implemented it here as a quick way to de-emphasize the bibliography, until a more permanent solution can be found, should bang-keep be the result. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 17:23, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I respectfully disagree about having a bibliography in the article body; I think it is perfectly acceptable. Actually a very common way to expand upon the scientific or literary credentials of someone is to include a starred list of "Selected publications" - a selective list of no more than half a dozen. That is what I would recommend here. IMO it would be better than what we have now. But as you say, let's wait for the outcome of the AfD. --MelanieN (talk) 17:39, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've seen it both ways; in an article on a journalist I worked on briefly, the *entire* bibliography was deleted, because they had 'only' published pieces in magazines (Newsweek/Time/etc). Which I thought was just nuts, but who can fight local consensus and remain sane?  ;-)     But since that BLP had never published books, 'only' magazine-pieces, it was all deleted as self-promotional and/or WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Shrug. I've also worked on an article about a retired logician from CUNY, who had approximately two sentences of body-prose (born YYYY in city state + became professor YYYY#2 at CUNY), followed by a selected bibliography of their most-cited-works (a dozen journal-papers out of roughly fifty published during their career). In that case, the bibliography basically WAS the entire article; the intro-prose was ancillary, the main thing was the bibliography itself. In the case of Harry Braun the bibliography is obviously important to understanding both his politics and his research, but I agree with DGG there are many ways to skin a cat (aka layout the relevant facts here), and I'm sure we can figure something reasonable out, one way or the other. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 20:32, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Explaining my minor edits to provide a citation for my IAHE Advisory Board reference, and to fix two defective links.

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Hello 75.108, I have undone all of my changes. I do recall that you said not to make any edits, but given the links to the International Association for Hydrogen Energy and H2Pac did not work, I merely redirected the link from the IAHE that went nowhere, to the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy link that is active on Wikipedia. I noticed my Advisory Board status needed a citation, and since the only one I had was my letter of invitation from the IAHE president, T. Nejat Veziroglu back in 1981, I linked my "Advisory Board Member" reference to the IAHE website page that lists me along with the other Advisory Board Members. And rather than referring people to H2Pac, whose link does not work because the organization has evolved into the Democracy Amendment USA organization that was formalized in 2014, I was merely correcting the errors. I thought that such minor edits would be acceptable, and I now realize that they are not.Harry W Braun III (talk) 03:22, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I added a citation for the IAHE advisory board. See question below about the PAC. --MelanieN (talk) 18:08, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
(e/c) This is the self-revert, for those who are curious.[9] No problem Harry, what is done can easily be undone, and thanks for doing so. But as explained to you over on my usertalk, since you personally are the topic of wikipedia's Harry Braun article, it will be extremely difficult for you to put on the cloak of wiki-neutrality. Plus of course, as a beginning editor there are a lot of wiki-rules you simply have never heard of. But it's better to make mistakes in articles NOT related to yourself and your work and your campaign, so as to avoid giving even the appearance of promotionalism. It's like taking donations from the oil industry, to put it bluntly: even if you were offered a billion dollars for your superpac, with no strings attached, you would have to turn it down, right? To avoid the appearance of political corruption, even if you were confident that you could take that billion dollars of oil-industry money, and keep on running your campaign on your hydrogen-economy-is-better-than-fossil-fuel-economy platform. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 20:18, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

IAHE and IJHE

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So, to help Harry out a little, on how to make suggestions on talkpages, here is what he seems to be asking, Harry please correct me if I'm wrong, Suggestion#1:

References

  1. ^ a b http://www.iahe.org/advisory.asp

Note the bluelink, which is actually pointing to International Journal of Hydrogen Energy aka IJHE, the main publication of the IAHE. Instead of linking to IJHE and printing IAHE, to me it would make more sense to create a redirect International Association for Hydrogen Energy that points to the IJHE article. Thataway, we can leave the Harry Braun article saying International Association for Hydrogen Energy, and if and when that IAHE article is created (whether as a redirect in 2015 or potentially as a fullfledged article in 2018 or whatever), no wikilinks will be accidentally broken.

The ref that Harry is suggesting we add is correct... although originally he goofed by adding it as a direct-hyperlink-from-body-prose rather than as a footnote... but because he is a long-term member of the IAHE, and because that organization is a redlink, do people here think we need something better than mutual-WP:ABOUTSELF (Harry says he's a member and the IAHE website confirms he is a member), for the factoid to be in the Harry Braun article? Is there a newspaper/teevee/magazine/radio/similar source, where the journalist has noted that Braun is in the IAHE, per WP:NOTEWORTHY, in other words? If not, can we leave the sentence about IAHE, cited to the IAHE website, or is that too borderline-self-promotional? Also, note that we are kinda-already using the supplied ref in the article, name="iahe" for some other BLP details, so instead of adding a bare-ref we can just use {{efn | name="iahe"}} for the moment, pending potential refTag-and-efn reorganization as discussed in talkpage sections above. Neither the board-members-page that Harry supplied, nor the bio-page that we've been using to fill in some gaps, actually specifies "1981" as the date the BLP joined the IAHE board, so for that final YYYY sentence-fragment [citation needed] is still retained. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 20:18, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There's nothing wrong or promotional about listing an organization where he is on the advisory board, and using that organization's website as the source. This is done all the time. In fact it's good to use the organization as the source; it provides outside confirmation, and you want to have as little as possible to be sourced to himself. I added it as a reference. I left out the year he joined, since it's not important and it's not confirmed by the IAHE (they say "for the past 30 years" but we don't know when they wrote that, so there is no reference year). As I noted below, the IAHE biography is seriously out of date so we should use it only for information that does not change - but we can certainly use it to confirm that he is on their advisory board. --MelanieN (talk) 15:16, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, agree that mutually-supporting-WP:ABOUTSELF is pretty common way of verifiably-citing such things, and since the org seems legit, that means such as usage is not promotional-in-the-wikipedia-sense to list it. (Though of course User:Harry_W_Braun_III should not themselves be making direct mainspace edits like that, as opposed to suggesting such edits on the talkpage, so as to avoid the appearance of promotional-editing.) Then, the other question is, should there be a new redirect, from IAHE which is currently a redlink, to their main(?) journal the IJHE, or alternatively, to their main(?) conference the WHEC? Those are the main already-existing bluelinks that a quick search turned up, but we don't have a bluelink for the IAHE itself. We could also leave it a redlink, or we could create a one-sentence stub-article for the association-behind-the-journal-and-conference, if it passes WP:42. Ping User:Harry_W_Braun_III, are you aware of press-coverage (online or off) specifically about the IAHE as an organization, that would be useful for such an article? 75.108.94.227 (talk) 23:26, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

WP:ELNO

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On the external links question, what is the correct "official page" for this BLP article? I thought it would probably be http://www.phoenixprojectfoundation.us site as the project-slash-book most closely associated with the BLP's name from 1990 thru 2008+ , or possibly http://harrybraunshow.com , but not the http://democracyAmendmentUSA.net which is the PAC for the 2016 campaign, nor the soon-to-be-live http://BraunForPresident.US which is the official campaign committee for Braun'16, nor the http://www.braun2012.us site for the 2012 campaign. Is listing http://www.PhoenixProjectFoundation.us , as the "Official Page" under a newly-created External Links section, the correct approach? We don't have an EL section in the article yet. There doesn't seem to be http://www.HarryBraun.com that is applicable to the BLP at least. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 20:18, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The editors on the Democratic Party presidential candidates, 2016 page noticed Braun was a bluelink August 27th (if memory serves), and are linking to http://DemocracyAmendmentUSA.net as his 'campaign website' at the moment. Technically that is his officially-campaign-affiliate-PAC website, and the actual campaign website is http://BraunForPresident.US , which is available on the internet at the moment, but may not be "officially launched" as the Official Page for the campaign yet. I'm still thinking that the official page for Harry Braun#External_links (as opposed to the official-campaign-page mentioned at Democratic Party presidential candidates, 2016) should probably not be his 2016 campaign-website, but rather use his Phoenix Project nonprofit organization website since that has been in operation since circa 1990 in various guises, or possibly some more-specifically-about-the-person website that I've not run across. Ping User:Harry_W_Braun_III, can you leave a comment here, about which website is your personal Official Page? Am I correct in saying that http://www.phoenixprojectfoundation.us is probably the most relevant target for Harry Braun, and also that using http://BraunForPresident.US is probably the most appropriate target for the Democratic Party presidential candidates, 2016 comparison-page? Thanks. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 16:12, 31 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
See continuation of this issue, below at Talk:Harry_Braun#Updates_needed. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 11:12, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Political Action Committee

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A contested sentence in the article says that there is (it formerly said "was") a political action committee associated with the Phoenix Project Foundation. I could find no evidence on the web that the PAC exists, except a report at whois that the domain name exists and is registered to Harry Braun.[10] It has no website, and the only online mention of it I could was a 2008 post on a 9/11 Truther blogsite. I'm wondering if we should delete that sentence, or what the status of the PAC is. User:Harry W Braun III, above you said that the PAC had morphed into the Democracy Amendment website; should we remove any mention of the PAC? Is Democracy Amendment a PAC? --MelanieN (talk) 18:01, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have similar questions. There are at least three PACs, some mentioned in WP:RS, some not: H2PAC from circa 2003 (ref: NPR blurb), P3 from unknown date (ref: IAHE quasi-aboutself blurb), and DAU (the 527 organization aka super-PAC that is behind the current Braun'16 campaign). 75.108.94.227 (talk) 20:21, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(e/c again :-)     Suggestion#2, again interpreting Harry's edits, please correct me if I'm wrong here:

References

  1. ^ a b c "Biography of Harry Braun, Sustainable Partners International". International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Retrieved 20 August 2015.
  2. ^ http://democracyAmendmentUSA.net
teachable moment... explanation of why the "bad" version is wiki-bad

In the course of his second suggestion, Harry made a beginner's mistake: he revised a sentence about some historical factoid, to reflect the current (and perfectly true) state of affairs, but in the process left the existing reference. So two bad things happened: one, sourced historical information was deleted, about the H2PAC. More importantly, new information was added... which happens to be true and currently correct... but which also happens NOT to be backed up by the citation, to which it mistakenly was left attached! Even though he self-reverted quickly, today when I look for "DemocracyAmendmentUSA" "2014" in the search engines, hit#3 is the promotional version of mainspace:

  • Harry Braun - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  • en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Braun
  • And given that over 16 million automotive vehicles produced for the United States in 2014, ... as a verifiable paper ballot from the DemocracyAmendmentUSA.net

It's important to keep promotional material out of mainspace, because search engines don't crawl the web instantaneously. Every time something promotional gets inserted into mainspace, whether on purpose or by mistake, wikipedia's reputation suffers a wee little bit, until the search engine crawlers re-scan the article in question.

Anyways, correct wiki-procedure is to leave the sourced historical information alone, and just insert a new sentence about the new state of affairs, with a *proper* WP:SOURCE for that new information properly attached. We cannot use http://DemocracyAmendmentUSA.net , as the "WP:SOURCE" to back up this new sentence, because as a 527 super-PAC which can expend unlimited funds on Braun'16, it would be too promotional for WP:ABOUTSELF to apply. People that want to donate to Braun'16 can follow the link to his main website, found in the external links section... well, once we have that section, they can, more on that in a moment. But it is definitely WP:THETRUTH that there is a new PAC.

Is it the truth that H2PAC, active circa 2003, is now shut down? Some potus campaigns in 2016 are running up to five superPAC vehicles simultaneously, by my rough counts. Was the switch from H2PAC merely a name-change of the existing PAC? When was H2PAC founded, and when was it shut down, if it has been shut down?

As for an independent source that mentions the new DAU superpac, http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P16/candidates.phtml has the complete listing, it is WP:BLOGS but might qualify as wiki-reliable. We could also go primary-source aka WP:PRIMARY, and get info about the new superpac from the FEC. But I don't think the WP:SOURCES have noted the new PAC name, as yet.

p.s. Ironically, the 'source' for the details of the H2PAC, currently in mainspace, is "incorrect" aka information-not-in-citation-given: over on the actual website, the PAC that is mentioned in the IAHE blurb-prose is called P3 aka http://PhoenixProjectPac.US aka Phoenix Project Political Action Committee. As with the binary relationship between H2PAC and DAU PAC, the triangular relationship between H2PAC and DAU PAC and P3 is unclear to me. Maybe the FEC website, or Harry himself, can clear up which PACs were operational during which years, and what campaigns (if any) they were affiliated with, and what nonprofit orgs (if any) they were affiliated with, and so on and so forth. Ping User:Harry_W_Braun_III, can you help us understand what is going on with your PACs, over the history of your efforts? Did you have any PACs back in the 1980s, I guess is the first question? And after that, which PACs did you have affiliated with yourself and/or your organizations, and over what timespans? Thanks. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 20:18, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I did not establish any Pac's in the 1980's, and as I recall, I established H2Pac (i.e., the Hydrogen Political Action Committee) in 1998, and in 2002 we established the Phoenix Project Pac (i.e., P3), which was used until 2014, at which point we established the Democracy Amendment USA organization, which is focused on shifting the political power from the oil and nuclear lobbyists to the majority of citizens, so they could then be empowered to end lobbying and money in politics in order to shift from the Oil Economy to a solar-sourced Hydrogen Economy. None of our political action committees funded any candidates, nor were we affiliated with any other Pac organizations.Harry W Braun III (talk) 02:14, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
User:Harry_W_Braun_III, can you tell me whether H2PAC and P3 were officially registered as FEC entities, or as IRS entities? Did people actually cut cheques made out to "Hydrogen PAC" the legal entity, or was this more a case of the 501(c)(3) Phoenix Project Foundation accepting donations for the 15% (or whatever the exact number is) of their efforts that can be devoted to political work? Aka, was there a distinct legal entity called H2PAC, either in the state of AZ or at some federal agency, or was this PPF-dba-H2PAC sort of arrangement? I've done a bit of looking around on the FEC.gov website, and found the DemocracyAmendmentUSA filing, as well as some older documents related to the 1980s campaign committee, but haven't found the PAC-related stuff. Didn't check IRS nor State-of-Arizona for such things (not sure how :-)   but figured you probably know these answers. Thanks, 75.108.94.227 (talk) 22:58, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So, bottom line: It sounds like we should delete the reference to the PAC, and in fact not mention any PACs. I believe I was the one who inserted that sentence, based on the bio at the IAHE webpage. But that bio is seriously out of date, including listing the old name of his company and giving his residence as Arizona. So I'm thinking we should use it only for information that does not change, like where he went to school. I'm going to go ahead and remove the sentence. --MelanieN (talk) 03:27, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, to strictly obey WP:NOTPROMOTION we need to first have some journalistic sources for the PACs, in hand, to prove they are WP:NOTEWORTHY. I believe NPR mentioned the H2PAC, if memory serves, so once we get the details hammered out of where each PAC has been mentioned in the press, we can use WP:ABOUTSELF from Harry's website (or WP:PRIMARY from the FEC website) to fill in the details about when H2PAC was founded. Since the DAU PAC is basically brand new from 2014, it will not likely have press-mentions until Braun'16 is officially launched. And of course, there is WP:NORUSH to get the history of the fundraising vehicles into the article. I do think we should figure out what the "official page" for this BLP is, and add the EL section, however (see WP:ELNO talkpage section above). Readership that wants to learn more, at the moment has nowhere to click so as to learn more. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 11:49, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

lede has political activities first, or research activities first?

[edit]

User:JayJasper has switched the ordering of the first two "job titles" around, in the intro-paragraph.[11]

  • old: Harry Braun... is a Democratic political candidate (congressional nominee in 1984 and 1986 plus presidential campaigns in 2004, 2012, 2016), and a researcher who has published papers on the hydrogen economy, solar power, and photobiology.
  • new: Harry Braun... is a an American researcher who has published papers on the hydrogen economy, solar power, and photobiology. He has also been a Democratic political candidate on several occasions including as a congressional nominee in 1984 and 1986, as well as presidential candidate in 2004, 2012, and 2016.

Along the way, added in a nationality, which is good, and split a long sentence in twain, which is also good. Personally, I do tend to agree that researcher-first politician-second is the truth of the matter, but we're supposed to reflect what the sources say, and although we have a handful of sources about his research, we have a significantly larger quantity of press-coverage about his political career. Can folks comment here on whether it is wiki-kosher to introduce the topic of Harry Braun as researcher comma political candidate, as opposed to political candidate comma researcher? Thanks. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 22:21, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Politics first, research second. We need to follow the sources. Virtually all the sources cited are about his political campaigns. In fact coverage of his "research" is pretty much nonexistent, except in the context of his running for office. MelanieN alt (talk) 11:41, 29 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Good point about following the sources. I have no problems with my changes being switched back to politics first, research second.--JayJasper (talk) 17:13, 29 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
So, I had a turn at writing the lede, JayJasper took their turn... User:MelanieN, that means it must be your turn to do a rewrite of the first paragraph.  ;-)     If you'd like to do so, per WP:CHOICE, o'course. If you'd rather me or JayJasper mess with the switcheroo back to candidate-then-researcher, please just let us know. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 08:12, 1 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm out of town and don't have much computer access. Anyone who wants to write a lede, following the idea here as well as the improved sentence structure of the "new" version, feel free. (Maybe just switch the sentences of the "new" version?) MelanieN alt (talk) 02:46, 4 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Tweaked. The bluelinked-party was paren'd to keep it physically separate from the Americans-bluelink. The energy-consultant-bit was added per what the sources called him that I ran across[1][2][3] whilst editing Democratic Party presidential candidates, 2016#Other_candidates.

References

  1. ^ https://books.google.com/books?id=mFuKFwL0MHQC&lpg=PP1&dq=isbn%3A0887848575&pg=PT223#v=onepage&q=braun&f=false
  2. ^ http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2002/04/03/Hydrogen-based-system-doable-but-not-easy/54301017866439/
  3. ^ https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=932&dat=19830110&id=FKcNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=xFUDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4978,742176&hl=en

Current lede:

  • ...is an American political candidate (Democratic), on several occasions including as a congressional nominee in 1984 and 1986, as well as presidential candidate in 2004, 2012, and 2016. He is also an energy consultant and researcher with published papers on the hydrogen economy, solar power, and photobiology.

I've not integrated the 3 sources above into the article, the first is just a namedrop (Lester Brown again but being quoted by by other people), the 2002 and 1983 newspapers may have a bit more depth worth plumbing, but I've only skimmed them so YMMV. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 10:22, 7 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Reference format

[edit]

Now that the article has been "kept", can somebody please put the references back into a normal/readable format? Or at least do so for the biographical information? MelanieN alt (talk) 18:57, 4 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ping User:DGG, I believe you volunteered to offer your wiki-reference-formatting-expertise, on a good way to reference the cites papers, without a potentially-WP:UNDUE dedicated-boldfaced-bulleted-list-bibliography subsection? 75.108.94.227 (talk) 03:23, 7 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Updates needed

[edit]

The article says that "as of August 2015 his formal campaign-announcement has not yet been made." Is that still true? If it is, we should change it to September 2015. If he has "formally announced", we might say something about it - at least if any Reliable Source has covered it. I'll ask about it on his talk page.

I see that his campaign website http://www.braunforpresident.us/ is now live. I think we would normally include that under "external links". (Google also finds a lot of his campaign material on the website of the Phoenix Project Foundation, which puzzles me since the Phoenix Project Foundation is a 501-c-3 nonprofit organization and is not supposed to engage in politics. I don't think we should link to any of that material.) --MelanieN (talk) 19:23, 18 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Oops! User:Harry W Braun III has been blocked until he proves to Wikipedia that he is the real Harry Braun and not an imposter. However, before he was blocked he replied on my talk page to my questions. It appears that he did issue his "formal announcement," in the form of a press release, on September 14, and is working on trying to get some coverage. My inclination at this point is to remove the sentence about a formal campaign announcement, list his campaign website under External Links, and wait for developments. OK with everybody? --MelanieN (talk) 20:16, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Proof supplied, account unblocked, all is well. --MelanieN (talk) 23:39, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
User:MelanieN, I have a question open for Mr. Braun on my usertalk about the correct external link. I don't think that the campaign-website is correct, because I think it is too ephemeral -- by 2017, it will no longer be 'correct' per WP:ELDEAD ("likely to remain relevant"). That said, it seems pretty reasonable to take the exception-clause of WP:ELMINOFFICIAL, namely that "more than one link may be appropriate, under a very few limited circumstances" which in a footnote specifically says that linking to an official site, and also linking to a campaign-website, is allowed. The rest of the footnote talks about what to do, when a particular person is wiki-noteworthy for two aspects. Braun is noted for his political campaigns, and also noted for his hydrogen-research-and-advocacy-slash-education efforts, so in my mind it makes sense to have a link to his official website as a researcher, then a second link to his (most recent) official website as a political candidate. There are two choices for each of those two options, however:
If we go with just one link, I think it should be either #1_A or #1_B, which cover his research papers as well as his political platform-planks. Using only one of the Braun'16 websites, as the sole official external link, seems to be WP:RECENTISM methinks. If we want to avoid recentism, the PhoenixProjectFoundation website is the best option, because Braun's books and papers have regularly used that name: 1990, 2000, 2003, and 2008. Furthermore, although it is a non-profit, it is not prohibited legally from engaging in *limited* political efforts (up to 20% of the budget I believe), and even when not *explicitly* political, can do all sorts of educational outreach to citizens, about the benefits of a pro-hydrogen policy for instance, as long as candidates are not mentioned by name. Braun'16 is not the only campaign to use such campaign-finance techiques, the Rubio campaign and the Bush campaign and the Clinton campaigns all have some flavor of nonprofit associated with them, if memory serves.
  On the other hand, if the local talkpage consensus is that two official websites are allowed, then I would bangvote for website#1_A as the most relevant to Braun-the-energy-analyst, and website#2_A as most relevant to Braun the political canddidate. It is true that website#2_B will likely be around longer than website#1_A, but because a super-PAC is inherently a fundraising vehicle, I'm leery about linking to website#2_B when we have #2_A for our use. The same argument could be used to say that we ought to prefer #1_B website ("news") over the #1_A website ("educational foundation which does outreach but also fundraising for that outreach") but the tie-in with the decades of publications seems too strong, to my wiki-eyes, to pass up. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 02:18, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It's not at all uncommon to have more than one link to pages associated with the person. There doesn't have to be just one "official link". A few days ago I boldly put two entries under External links, which I labeled as "Campaign website" and "Phoenix Project Foundation Website." What do you think about this approach? I definitely don't think we should link to the Democracy Amendment site; linking to his PAC is like asking the reader for money. And not the Science News Network thing, either, which is purely campaign propaganda. If the campaign website goes dead after 2016, we can simply remove it and leave the Phoenix Project link. --MelanieN (talk) 05:28, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yup, please continue to be WP:BOLD. Part of the reason I'm adding a rationale here, it to entice Mr. Braun into making a comment here on article-talk. I'm not sure he realizes yet that it is 100% okay to add his own suggestions here, to this article-talkpage.  :-)     Ping User:Harry_W_Braun_III, you can feel free to leave specific suggestions here, about what you believe will best improve the article. You are also perfectly free to speak 'directly' to myself and MelanieN and other wikipedians, via usertalk, but posting to Talk:Harry_Braun is allowed by the wiki-laws, and may be the fastest way to get a reply.
  Also, another reason, I like to get it 'on the record' that I too agree the super-PAC link would be a bit too promotional. I'm okay with the Braun'16 link, and with the PhoenixProjectFoundation link. (Though I did not see the ScienceNewsNetwork website as more nor less of an advocacy-site... it didn't even link to the Braun'16 page that I noticed... but then, I only looked at the about-page and the main homepage.) Agree that a double-link solution is a good fit for this BLP-article, as well.
  p.s. I did like the C-SPAN as an EL, though, because it has video-footage; MelanieN, you removed that as being redundant to the entry in the reflist. But I disagree, and think it is an interesting highlight, because it shows the candidate in action, as it were. If you don't think C-SPAN belongs under WP:ELNO, then maybe it can go under 'Further reading' or something? I've also been mulling over whether to put the bibliography stuff under a further-reading section, which will keep it nicely organized but without over-emphasis. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 11:08, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I generally don't put things in External Links if they are already listed as a reference. But reading the fine print (literally) at ELNO I find that such listings are allowed. So go ahead and re-add it if you think it adds value to the article. MelanieN alt (talk), —Preceding undated comment added 18:38, 26 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

some sources as of September

[edit]

I have not attempted to integrate these with the article. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 10:52, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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