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Major Revisions

I made a number of significant changes in the revision:

  • Structured the article that had become an uncontrolled ramble.
  • Added additional sourcing
  • Added the SFBA Project template to this page.

Hopefully this comes much closer to NPOV.

-- Oskibear2008 ( talk) 14:28, 6 October 2008 (UTC) reply

Attempting to balance this article

I've made the beginnings of my attempt balance this article and bring it back to NPOV. In doing so, I've found that the article is very scattered in its organization. In the next few days I'm going spend some time trying to reorganize the material, elimate some the redundancy, and update the template.

-- Oskibear2008 ( talk) 02:11, 26 September 2008 (UTC) reply

On 25 October 2006, Kestenbaum wrote -- "How could she have been elected twice if she was so bad? Article should include positives as well as negatives."

The answer to Kestenbaum's question is that Berkeley progressives are incredibly incompetent, and couldn't manage to run a decent campaign exposing how bad she really was. It wasn't until 2002 when Tom Bates ran against her that voters finally kicked her out of office.

I will rewrite bits of this in past tense, and move pieces around as the situation unfolds.

Info that needs to be incorporated in encyclopedic form:

Mayor Dean opposed the Berkeley city council resolution condemning the US military action in Afghanistan. The city council action resulted in several pending transactions, including real estate development, to be canceled, resulting in a loss of revenue for the city. Mayor Dean is working to mitigate the effects of the city council action. These effects evidently include grassroots consumer boycott of Berkeley based businesses, especially damaging in Berkeley because while Berkeley traditionally opposes the presence of large corporate entities in the city, the cost of living and doing business in Berkeley is nonetheless very high.

The irony in this is the law of unintended consequences. The residents of Berkeley are very well-trained in the use of boycott, a favorite local political tool.

In Berkeley, city politics takes the place sports takes in many other cities. Community participation is very strong. The current political situation is very interesting, because the 5/4 split and apparently widespread disapproval of the councils actions could result in a markedly different city after the next elections. While the election of a political conservative is unlikely, even the election of what most would consider political moderates would be locally noteworthy, and a swing to the center would be a very marked shift in Berkeley's tradition of radicalism.

'Beyond absurd?' Less is more - the temptations of bias in political biography

24.7.67.79 20:41, 23 August 2007 (UTC) Perhaps I should apologize for using a satirical edit of the Dean biography to point out its failings. reply

I come not to bury Dean nor to praise her. I have no interest in being her defender, advocate or biographer. I am, however, offended by the biography's failure to adhere to the NPOV policy, which serves only to de-legitimize Wikipedia as a whole. The NPOV policy requires that the authors critically edit their own work lest a "biography" become a political statement. Such self-critical analysis is absent here. One might suggest that less is more, however personally pleasant it may be to diss the political opposition. A comparison with the biography of her successor, Tom Bates, is instructive.

Point 1: The biography as it stands cannot fairly be said to be neutral and indeed appears mean-spirited. Pejoratives such as "Shirley Mean," and judgmental characterizations that Mayor Dean "used her power as presiding member to control the agenda and frustrate the progressive Council majority at every turn", have no place in a biography adhering to the NPOV principle. The former jibe gives undue credence to street theater, and the latter -- opinion, not fact -- reflects a one-sided commonplace of political life. Both frustrating one's political adversaries and appropriating their ideas are facts of political life. This is a reality, however much one party may feel victimized, and regardless of who makes the claim or whether it is "true" in the eye of the beholder. Suffice to say here that such claims have been made by politicians of all stripes in Berkeley, and throughout history. The inclusion of one such claim is not neutral, and canot be made so to an uninformed reader without an extensive description of many years of local Berkeley politics. Absent that, such statements are simply argumentative, and none are appropriate. There are other, neutral, ways of saying that Dean and other councilmembers were at odds with one another.

Point 2: It is simply untrue to suggest that Dean's role was wholly negative and obstructionist. The statements about Ms. Dean's mayoralty appear to reflect the viewpoint of her political opponents only. Offhand I could list several significant items omitted from the piece: Dean's creation of the successful Berkeley downtown arts and culture district, Dean's role in increasing housing density in the downtown and along some of Berkeley's main streets, Dean's role in constraining the growth of city staff, Dean's leadership on the issue of disaster preparedness, and the view of some neighborhood activists that her policies in office had abandoned her base. Whether these are positives or negatives, or even capable of determination as "facts", is not the point. Ultimately, I suggest that the biography be sharply trimmed and edited self-critically (including removal the Worthington reference discussed below.) The details (such as they are) ought to be left to the judgment of history.

Point 3: A final illustration of the NPOV point is the latest edit's inclusion of the characterization of Worthington as a "life master" of the art of stealing other politicians' ideas. It was satire to begin with; its incorporation is astonishing in light of the characterization of the edits as "beyond absurd." Neutrality is not achieved by incorporating opinion as a bone to criticism. 24.7.67.79 20:41, 23 August 2007 (UTC) reply

Removing comedy, requesting better sourcing

In the next few days, I'll spend a few minutes to improve the sourcing and references which is so bad right know that much of the biography could be deleted. I removed the Worthington comment and some of the word usage that had POV issues. While I have enjoyed reading this article as a joke from time to time, I find my own sense of wikipedia ethic preventing me from allowing this page to remain the way it was. If anyone wants to have a good laugh, just look back on the page history. [[User:calbear22]] 18:18, 22 September 2007 (UTC) reply

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