User talk:Mazoola

April 2010

Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute to the encyclopedia, but when you add or change content, as you did to the article Gabrielle Anwar, please cite a reliable source for the content of your edit. This is particularly important when adding or changing any facts or figures and helps maintain our policy of verifiability. Take a look at Wikipedia:Citing sources for information about how to cite sources and the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Needs a better source than a society blog. NeilN ^{talk to me} 21:21, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

I wondered if that source would pass muster when I cited it, but decided to leave it because it was the most informative of the 100-odd online sources mentioning the relationship, and it contained several photos of the pair's blended family. (And, strictly speaking, as a source it most likely fulfills the "author with published work in relevant field" clause of WP:SPS, but the idea there might actually be enough interest in Miami society happenings for one to garner sufficient reliable third-party publication to be considered an expert on the topic was far too depressing to pursue.) Instead, I've changed the reference to cite a similar piece from the Miami Herald, which I trust will be an acceptably stolid hunk o' MSM. But thanks for keeping me honest! Mazoola (talk) 00:08, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

I've reverted your edit again. If you're going to link Anwar to the mob even tangentially then high quality sources are needed that specifically cover the link and why it's notable. As you can appreciate, Wikipedia is not a tabloid or gossip magazine. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 02:06, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

I've reverted your reversion — but dropped the term "Mob-connected" for the moment, until I can figure out how best to footnote this given -- which, frankly, should be documented in the [non-existent in the English WP] Alvin Malnik entry, not here. While I've not yet checked, I suspect the Malniks are responsible for there not being an English entry; they've established an absurd number of 2- to 5-page websites under a slew of Malnik- or Miami-related domain names in an attempt to 'spin' the results of the typical web search on "Al Malnik," so a little Wiki-focused white wash seems perfectly logical for them. And while the degree and specificity of Al's ties to the Mob can be debated — was he truly, as Readers Digest claimed, Meyer Lansky's "heir apparent," an active participant in money laundering and extortion, or was he just another Mob-retained lawyer, tasked with representing their resources in the Southeast? — the fact of his connectiveness is pretty much unquestioned. He was the attorney of record for Lansky and other Mob figures; he was a founder or director of several financial services firms that existed, at least in part, to launder Mob money; his restaurant, the Forge (now owned by Shareef Malnik), was a favored hangout for organized crime figures living in or visiting Miami and the scene of at least one high-profile Mob hit; he was the intended victim of a contracted hit, with the bombing of his Rolls Royce in 1982; and he was twice cited as a "person of unsuitable character" by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission because of his Mob ties and banned. Again, all this eventually should point to a Malnik entry, with minimal citation in the Anwar entry.

Let me make this clear: *any* uncited reference to the mob, commented or otherwise, is a WP:BLP violation. Please don't do that again or we'll be headed to WP:ANI. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 01:23, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Damn, I'm really sorry about that; that's what I get for having eight different documents open at once while simultaneously trying to hunt through WP's endlessly unspiralling help pages and play phone tag with a particularly neurotic client. I'd started to footnote "Mob-connected" (hence the overly detailed Talk update, above) when I realized none of it belonged in the Anwar entry but should be used to annotate a separate "Alvin Malnik" page. I clipped out all the citations I'd just added (saving them for use later), but when I got to the phrase they'd sourced, I dimly remembered working on some CMS, possibly WP, that supported a super-comment: Items super-commented could be viewed and accessed while in edit mode, but they never appeared in the dynamic site -- not even as comments to source.

That set me off for a romp through the help pages, looking for the magic syntax needed. I couldn't find it — but wondered if I was just misremembering how the server handled traditional HTML comments. Commented out the phrase and previewed the edited text; somewhere around there a census worker came to the door, and the phone rang a couple of times, and I ended up saving the page so I could restart the PC, and I never got around to verifying the commented-out phrase wasn't viewable on the active site, even as non-displaying text in the source.

Over dinner I realized what I'd done (or hadn't done), and was logging back in to fix it when I saw your latest note. Definitely my bad — and definitely not what I'd intended. Again, my earnest apologies.

That said, choosing to remove the reference to Alvin Malnik in its entirety is coming close to editing for editing's sake. For better or worse, Alvin Malnik is a significant personage in Florida social and political circles and an increasingly significant philanthropist nationally — and he's a large part of why anyone has ever heard of Shareef. Leaving him out of the picture is kind of like saying someone was in a relationship with Harry Mountbatten-Windsor… but failing to mention this gentleman is more commonly known as Prince Henry of Wales. Again, it's an edit that succeeds only in making the modified text different from the original.

Also, if I can make a suggestion: If, instead of reflexively reverting my original edit, and my second edit, and my third edit, you had started by commenting on my talk page something along the lines of, hey, thanks for contributing, but you probably should find a more well-established source for your reference, and since such a phrase as "Mob-connected" is an automatic red flag, you're going to want either to make sure it's well-documented or simply to remove it altogether, and then given me a couple of days to sort it all out, both you and I would have wasted far less time panning babies out of bathwater and re-re-re-editing a page that likely will ever be read only by the two of us. If, after a couple of days, I hadn't made the repairs, you still could have chosen to revert my edits. However, if I had logged back in, found your advice, and applied my newly strengthened understanding of WP policies and traditions to correct any questionable citations and wording, then Wikipedia would have been made a tiny bit better, and the community of regular Wikipedia editors might have found its ranks had increased by one: A former English grad student with extensive experience as a writer, editor, and proofreader for various mainstream, academic, and technical publications, and as the owner and publisher of a weekly Bay Area tabloid, who had finally had a Wikipedia experience that didn't serve primarily to remind him why he only rarely bothered having Wikipedia experiences. Unfortunately, you didn't.Mazoola (talk) 05:31, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I kept some of your third edit in. When it comes to biographies of living persons we have very strict policies: "Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion". Content should go in after it's properly sourced as there's no reason no rush. And the article has been viewed more than 38,000 times alone this month. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 05:50, 30 April 2010 (UTC)