Talk:Rick Santorum

NPOV

it is very easy to make this article more NPOV. Start adding things to the article of things that he has done that you think are positive things. I agree that this article focuses mostly on the homosexual controvery. That information should not be removed (obviously), but other things can be added. Kingturtle 18:58, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Dan Savage

I removed the Dan Savage blurb because he's just not particularly encyclopedic when it comes to Rick Santorum. Google for "Rick Santorum" gets 58,900. There are only 815 for "Rick Santorum" and "Dan Savage" (but you can get 6,320 if you combine with "Bill Clinton", 4,760 for "Howard Dean", 4,380 for John Kerry, etc.). The presidental candidates (as the leading liberal figures in the US right now) had far far more coverage and relevance in the scheme of things. Dan Savage is only worth linking if you want to make a POV statement and promote the neologism via Wikipedia. His commentary got far less coverage and play than statements by Human Rights Campaign and other gay advocacy groups. Daniel Quinlan 19:37, Dec 3, 2003 (UTC)

Dan Savage's campaign to create the word santorum is described at Savage Love. --Uncle Ed 20:32, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)

JAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJA

~~I was wondering why this rubbish was in VfD~~ (my mistake...). Man, this is an encyclopedia not a black-list-of-those-who-said-something-against-my-"""ideas"""! I am sure Rich Santorum has done more things than saying those phrases. By the way, why getting SO annoyed at the comparison between gay relations with incest? This reminds me a lot of Skinner's and Levi-Strauss' studies on sociology and anthropology... In the end everything sums up to an Oedipus Complex... doesn't it? Please remove this article as soon as possible, or give an honest description of his WORK. Pfortuny 17:34, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Please feel free to contribute "an honest description of his WORK." Dpbsmith 02:13, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Because gay sex has nothing to do with incest, and linking the two is merely an attempt to besmirch gay people. HTH. Andy Mabbett 12:04, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Also: my remark on "please feel free to contribute" was sincere. The present article is IMHO not balanced, but it's a little bit difficult for me to correct it, since my only awareness and knowledge of Mr. Santorum is as the issuer of a stupid and offensive remark attacking gays. This is literally the only thing I know about him. I would welcome the inclusion of some intellectually honest balancing material, but I cannot provide it. That must be done by Mr. Santorum's supporters. Certainly I think balance should be achieved by adding material, not removing existing material. Dpbsmith 16:56, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Santorum's slippery slope argument

Another nail has been driven into his argument that legalizing consensual adult gay sex would open the door to all kinds of immoral behavior. A man in Virginia was recently charged with adultery, a Class 4 misdemeanor in that state, and pled guilty. Story (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/12/07/ADULTERY.TMP). - Tualha 14:56, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

We're not here to debate the correctness of Santorum's (ill-advised, mean-spirited, ignorant, intolerant, unfair, gay-bashing) remark, but to brood about how best to present Santorum in an article that has an appropriately neutral point of view. (And, as a subtopic—but IMHO this problem has been adequately solved—how to make available on Wikipedia the factual information about Dan Savage's clever attack on Santorum in a way that does not take sides or allow Wikipedia to be co-opted into attacking Santorum.)

So, all this is off-topic for this page. But... with the understanding that this is off-topic--I'm not sure that I understand how the Virginia story bears on Santorum's remark, anyway. It didn't even take place in his state (Pennsylvania). Indeed, it's sort of saying that Virginia has a law that criminalizes heterosexual relations between consenting adults, which would seem to me to legitimize state interference with consenting homosexual relations, because it means there is fairness--both kinds of behavior are being treated with equal stupidity... Or are you hoping that the case will make people understand that the state has no legitimate business in the bedroom with consenting adults? Not attacking you, just curious as to how you see it. Dpbsmith 15:35, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I would argue that, in addition to making the legal argument that the constitution doesn't contain a right to privacy, he also is against a right to privacy. From his AP interview:

And if you make the case that if you can do whatever you want to do, as long as it's in the privacy of your own home, this "right to privacy," then why be surprised that people are doing things that are deviant within their own home? If you say, there is no deviant as long as it's private, as long as it's consensual, then don't be surprised what you get.

AxelBoldt 13:21, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I think, to be fair, that he hasn't said that. He may be against it, he may be for it, he may be for one defined differently than some courts have defined it, but we don't know and should not be guessing or implying (based on that excerpt at least). If you want to say that he's against bestiality or polygamy, I think you would have a better case since those are the specific consequences he's warning about. I'm not even sure the man wants homosexual sex to be illegal (I would not be too surprised), although I suspect he thinks it's wrong. My guesses or impressions don't belong in the article, though. Daniel Quinlan 19:13, Dec 11, 2003 (UTC)

You don't have a responsibility to assume the astronomically unlikely, either. You're allowed to use some measure of critical reasoning. Furthermore, right now the article is bending over backward to avoid the statements Santorum made in an attempt to characterize what he might have really meant or not. Santorum expressed a problem with homosexual sex, and asserted that he has no problems with homosexuals, as long as they choose not to engage in such sex. He also explicitly asserted that he does not believe in a Constitutional right to privacy. He said that homosexual sex is part of a larger class of deviant sexual acts, including incest, polygamy, and bestiality, that threaten the institution of marriage and the fabric of society. He explicitly said that he would disagree with a state which decides not to have sodomy laws. It takes a deliberate avoidance of critical thought to understand that he is advocating outlawing homosexuality through efforts at the state level, and to removing bars to doing so at the federal level. --The Cunctator 11:02, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, he definitely expressed a problem with homosexual sex, but that's not what I was objecting to. I have no problem with the article noting that (other than my NPOV concerns that the article is massively overfocused on the one interview). I was objecting to the way his views on the privacy right was generalized: it was expanded from being an interpretation of current law to a desired outcome and it was expanded from being specific to sex acts (and abortion?) to being all forms of privacy. I don't disagree with your conclusion, though, so I added some of that to the introduction, and I also took liberty to simplify the quoting which seemed to be going into a discussion/diatribe about the AP story and what excerpts were quoted. Daniel Quinlan 20:36, Dec 12, 2003 (UTC)

Well, I consider the fact that the word "gay" was not included in his original statement to be highly significant and have reinserted it. Above you said we should not make any guesses; changing a quote to clarify "what he really meant" thus seems to be very dangerous. His argument makes more sense the way he originally said it: if the SC rules that there is a general right to consensual sex, then surely there is an implied right to consensual adulterous or incestuous sex. But if the SC only says that you have the right to consensual gay sex, then nothing about (heterosexual) adulterous or incestuous sex can be deduced. AxelBoldt 15:07, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

NPOV dispute

I'm puzzled by a recent removal of the boilerplate saying that the neutrality of the article was disputed. The notice has since been restored.

The reason given for removal was that

removing NPOV dispute notice since I can't find an NPOV dispute in Talk.

Therefore, I'm adding this subhead to the page to make it perfectly clear that there is a dispute in active progress. It seems to me there has been pretty much since the article was created. (Some of the discussion did get siphoned off to Talk:Santorum).

Personally, I'm opposed to Santorum, but it has always seemed to me that the page is not neutral, and despite careful wordsmithing, the additional of material generally favorable to Santorum, and what I think is a good job in relocating the Rick Savage material and creating the Santorum disambiguation page, it seems to me that the article is still not neutral.

Since I know little about Santorum beyond his appalling and objectionable remarks that made headlines, I am not the one to help improve the article, but I think the dispute boilerplate should remain for the present. Dpbsmith 17:33, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Well, I wrote the comment that I can't find an NPOV dispute, and your statement above has still not explained what the NPOV dispute is. Which statement or omission is considered not NPOV? Is the article slanted against or in favor of Santorum? How are we to fix the article if people don't state their problems, besides "the neutrality is disputed"? Specifically, what would have to happen so that the NPOV notice can be removed? AxelBoldt 13:43, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I'm not the one who reinserted the notice, BTW. I don't feel strongly about about the topic to reinsert the notice if someone removes it, or remove it if someone reinserts it.

As to "what would have to happen," I'm still learning how things work around here... but I would guess that as long as people keep reinserting the notice a dispute is in progress. A decent respect for the opinions of Wikipedians would, I would think, require them to declare on the talk page the causes that impel them to the reinsertion.

I would guess that, being a Wiki, what would have to happen for the notice to be removed is for someone to remove it. If the notice stays removed, I'd suppose the dispute was over. For the notice to stay removed, I'd guess that there would have to be general consensus that the article was neutral, or that the people reinserting the notice were so clearly acting arbitrarily and not engaging in sensible discussion that the sysops would block them.

Now, as to what's not neutral: more than half of the article is still about Santorum's controversial statements on the sodomy law.

If you agree that Rick Santorum's public identity is, objectively, primarily that of an conservative ideologue, notable for his opposition to the gay-rights community, then there's no problem with the article so long as the facts about his ideology and actions are stated correctly and factually.

My feeling is that having more than half of the article devoted to this topic is non-neutral, even if the coverage of the topic itself is neutral.

Just my $0.02. Dpbsmith 15:53, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Same-sex marriage

maybe some of this content is better suited for the Same-sex marriage article. Kingturtle 18:34, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Probably not, actually. I think it's more specific to this article. Daniel Quinlan 20:36, Dec 12, 2003 (UTC)

As several people believe that the discussion of Rick Santorum's position on sodomy law is overweighting the entry--even though it evidently represents an accurate weighting of which of his actions have merited widespread interest--the obvious solution is to move the details of the discussion to a separate entry. --The Cunctator 16:24, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I like it better now. Dpbsmith 17:10, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Moving criticism to separate articles is the worst possible solution to NPOV. Daniel Quinlan 23:32, Dec 14, 2003 (UTC)

What do people know about ontheissues.org (http://www.ontheissues.org/) ?

It seems like an interesting site... politician's views on every topic sliced and diced and conveniently pigeonholed... and a little rating at the bottom, based on their voting record, and verbal summary. It says, for example, "Rick Santorum is a moderate conservative." Gotta look closer because scanning over the actual data I'm darned if I see the moderate part, but, there you go... Ted Kennedy rates as a "hardcore liberal."

The question I have is: does anyone know enough about ontheissues.org to know whether they'd generally be regarded as impartial? Dpbsmith 17:10, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

It's run by a community activist and web designer in Cambridge, Mass -- Jesse Gordon (http://www.jessegordon.com) -- who's a sort of libertarian-liberal (and I can't explain it any better than that), and I think that the ratings at the site reflect that -- I don't really consider it impartial myself, but it's a good resource for lots of info... -- BCorr ¤ Брайен 00:40, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Splitting page

Splitting this page is the worst possible solution to solve NPOV. The article is not long enough to justify splitting. Someone also tried to solve the Mother Teresa criticism dispute the same way and the result was horrible, two non-NPOV articles instead of one NPOV article. I object to the split, but I'm not about to get into an edit war over it with The Cunctator, who is splitting articles all over Wikipedia. Instead, I propose a vote. Daniel Quinlan 00:05, Dec 15, 2003 (UTC)

Split page:
One page: Daniel Quinlan, silsor, Angela, Martin 00:44, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC) (what Angela said), BCorr ¤ Брайен , Arvindn —Eloquence, Jiang
Abstain: Dpbsmith

Splitting which adds POV is bad. Splitting a page that is <20kb is bad. Angela . 00:19, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Instead of a vote, Mr. Quinlan, can we try discussing this and coming to a consensus? I don't understand the basis of your claim that "two non-NPOV articles" are being created. --The Cunctator 03:34, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Rick Santorum's arguments with regard to homosexuality are an integral part of a comprehensive biography about him. The article is nowhere near the maxiumum size of 30-40K, and splitting away only the parts of it that are controversial reduces exposure to these facts (because they are no longer readily visible from the main article) and is therefore POV.—Eloquence 07:16, Dec 15, 2003 (UTC)

What are you talking about? The present state fully discusses Rick Santorum's arguments with regard to homosexuality. The only thing it doesn't do is walk through the interview step by step, as the Rick Santorum's statements about homosexuality does.

There has been no attempt to strip away the controversial parts, and I challenge you to provide evidence for that claim. ---The Cunctator 07:28, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Apologies, I thought you wanted to split away the entire section. A summary is better, but I see no valid reason to split up the article in the first place.—Eloquence 07:37, Dec 15, 2003 (UTC)

Rather than splitting up the article, I think of it as promoting the Santorum affair. The reason is that Rick Santorum's statements about homosexuality (aka the Santorum affair) is a event of enough significance to cause specific responses, at least one of which is discussed in Wikipedia--Dan Savage's santorum competition. It is admittedly questionable whether Savage's neologism competition merits a link from Rick Santorum, but it's certainly not questionable that there should be a link from the Santorum affair. Does this seem right? --The Cunctator 07:45, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

This is not an event of sufficient historical significance to justify a separate entry, and if we cut down the redundancy and fluff in the present version, this should become evident. I am not opposed to a link to Savage Love from here.—Eloquence 07:51, Dec 15, 2003 (UTC)

How about the present summary as a compromise? This is sufficiently detailed for my taste, and those who want to add even more small factoids can do this in Santorum affair.—Eloquence

It's starting to look good to me. --The Cunctator 08:08, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

OK, let's agree to limit the discussion on this page to four paragraphs and one section.—Eloquence

I think we could reasonably get down to one paragraph, but the current state is satisfactory. --The Cunctator 08:23, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I find it problematic to matter-of-factly refer to it as "the Santorum affair", as this is not a generally accepted name of the incident. Given that Santorum has done other stupid things (Santorum amendment etc.), it seems unfair to single out this stupid thing and treat it as if it was the only stupid thing he's done.—Eloquence 08:34, Dec 15, 2003 (UTC)

It actually is a generally accepted name of the incident, as a Google search shows (see also talk:Santorum affair). --The Cunctator 08:38, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I checked Google before I wrote that. 77 hits, mostly weblogs, hardly counts as "generally accepted", especially when "Santorum homosexuals" returns 4700 hits.—Eloquence 08:42, Dec 15, 2003 (UTC)

This article has taken a severe turn downwards. Given that the above vote strongly supports a single article for Santorum and that the split has been used as an excuse to multiple the original text, I'm merging it back into this article and restoring the last somewhat less POV text. If that text is somehow limited, let's talk about it here. Daniel Quinlan 09:21, Dec 15, 2003 (UTC)

The above vote involves fewer than ten people. Please do not use it as justification for a reversion of a committed compromise effort between other editors. Voting is one of the worst ways to make decisions as a group (http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?VotingIsEvil).

I believe it's better than giving decision-making authority to whoever is the most persistent at pushing their point of view, those who abuse their power, or those who do not follow agreed-upon rules. Daniel Quinlan 09:52, Dec 15, 2003 (UTC)

What is the justification for your claim "This article has taken a severe turn downwards"? --The Cunctator 09:40, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I think it overextends his remarks and is less neutral than the previous text. In addition, I think that splitting the page is unnecessary and it seems like you have done it to provide two forums for you to edit the same POV text rather than one. I tried discussing things here and when that did not prove fruitful, I asked other people to express their opinion, and they did. Your desire to split the page was a very small minority view. I am merely restoring the last version to enjoy some stability and which preceeded the page split. Given the consensus, I think we should restore it and discuss from there. The split is not supportable at all. Daniel Quinlan 09:52, Dec 15, 2003 (UTC)

I'm torn. One the one hand I like articles in one piece. On the other hand, the level of detail is a bit extreme for what is not really such a big episode. In contrast, on Mother Teresa we summarized several quotes and removed some not so relevant details in order to trim the size of the criticism section. I did this in this revision (http://en2.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Rick_Santorum&oldid=1963984) of the present article. But I understand if if some people want these detailed facts -- who responded, what exactly did the transcript say etc. -- to be retained. For example, I could accept a detail article called Mother Teresa and Charles Keating to have quotes from the letter of the District Attorney to Mother Teresa etc., if the main article keeps its current level of detail which I regard as the minimum that is acceptable. The compromise solution seems to allow near-infinite expansion of the Santorum affair article while giving a fair overview of the case here. I would be interested in what others think, as balance, proportion and placement are tricky issues.

While I do not agree with Cunc's stance on voting, I do feel that it might be premature to enforce a vote result before the possibility to find consensus through discussion has been exhausted. This is an interesting precedent because I don't think anyone here feels really strongly about this issue.—Eloquence 09:55, Dec 15, 2003 (UTC)

I don't think it helped consensus at all to split the article, so now two different texts are being edited. The Cunctator did not achieve support and consensus for his split (followed by two moves of the page to keep people off-balance) before making it. The move appears to have had some tactical success, as the articles now make the points he wanted them to make, pushing Santorum's insensitive and homophobic remarks even further than the original, turning the split off article a one-sided discussion of the issue while this one remains quite focused on it as well. Simply, the version of the text I tried to restore was superior and succinct. His version merely adds POV and unnecessary quotes. The full text is in the external link, anyway. Daniel Quinlan 10:06, Dec 15, 2003 (UTC)

I don't think Cunc has an axe to grind here. He's been doing the split thing on quite a few articles in recent days. I believe he's trying to make a point. Out of curiosity, do you think that Book of Mormon and Book of Mormon controversies ought to be separate (as they are now) or merged (as I think they should be)? I'm trying to develop a generally agreeable policy here.—Eloquence 10:11, Dec 15, 2003 (UTC)

I do think TC has an axe to grind (both directly related to this article and also an overwhelming campaign to split content more and more so it becomes impossible to read about any one subject meaningfully and easily), but maybe the POV text is yours. ;-) It's hard to follow all these edits since the split. As far as the Mormon stuff goes, I think it also belongs in one article. I think splits for reasons of POV are almost always a bad idea. I don't actually object to all of TC's splits or proposed splits, although his unilateral editing style is not so great (frankly, it sucks) in my opinion. For example, I think moving the list of companies in NYC to a separate article is a great idea (Boston, on the other hand, no, the list was too short). The history of NYC, I am not so sure about. I think the history was perhaps better in the main article. Daniel Quinlan 10:20, Dec 15, 2003 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable. I think we should leave the current compromise in place until we get some more feedback.—Eloquence

The current article is no compromise. Daniel Quinlan 10:30, Dec 15, 2003 (UTC)

Please, I ask you, do not make claims as to what my motives are, especially as claims that my motives are to be detrimental and biased. You are asserting a lot of negative motives to my actions which are simply not the case. That is just not right.

Please do not claim that this revision (http://en2.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Rick_Santorum&oldid=1964703) represents "my version". It does not. It represents a compromise effort between Eloquence and myself, based on our mutual goal to improve Wikipedia's coverage of the truth, even though we disagree on how best to implement that.

I do not think the Rick Santorum entry needs as much detailed information about the Santorum affair as Eloquence does. This is the text which I preferred, from this revision (http://en2.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Rick_Santorum&oldid=1963978):

The Santorum affair is the controversy that arose among interested parties following U.S. Senator Rick Santorum's statements about homosexuality in an interview with the Associated Press taped on April 7, 2003 and published April 20, 2003. In the interview Santorum describes homosexual acts as part of a class of deviant sexual behavior, including incest, polygamy, and bestiality, which threaten society and the family. Furthermore Santorum stated that he believed consenting adults do not have a Constitutional right to privacy with respect to sexual act. Democratic politicians, gay rights advocates, and other liberal commentators condemned the statements, while Republican politicians, religious conservatives, and other conservative commentators supported Santorum and called the condemnations unfair.

After criticism by opponents and support from fellow Republicans, Santorum did not back down from his remarks, stating that his comments were not intended to equate homosexuality with incest and adultery, but rather as a critique of the specific legal position that the right to privacy prevent the government from regulating consensual acts among adults, because he does not believe that there is a Constitutional right to privacy.

Again, I ask you to not call the compromise revision my revision. I don't try to own articles, nor does the compromise revision reflect what I consider to be the best version.

However, I respect Erik Moeller as a person and as an editor, and I am willing--more than willing--to work with him--and anyone else--to find a compromise we can all accept. I find the satisfaction of developing a successful compromise significantly greater than having what I simply consider superior and succinct remain, to the detriment of my fellow contributors. Please, I beg you, extend a similar respect.

At no time did I take action with the intent to "keep people off balance" or to achieve "tactical success".

You are right that I have an axe to grind in regards to the Santorum affair. You know what it is? That the media coverage of this was confused, muddy, and partisan, since it quickly devolved into a reporting of what X said Y meant when he said Z said X meant "foo". That's my axe to grind.

Again, you attack my motives, stating that I am on "an overwhelming campaign to split content more and more so it becomes impossible to read about any one subject meaningfully and easily". Please stop making such attacks. Budding off topics is a necessary part of Wikipedia editing, and I make every effort to do it responsibly.

--The Cunctator 10:32, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Miscellaneous unasked-for thoughts on splitting. Please forgive me if this has all been hashed over for years. I love the Eleventh Edition of the Britannica, where the articles are long, rich, detailed, college-to-grad-school level, authoritative. They are full of verve and personality, yet extremely factual. I detest e.g. the current World Book or, worse yet, Grolier's, where the articles are short, bland, inoffensive, high-school level, and seem to have been written for approval by the Texas textbook committee, and resemble a bloated version of a one-volume desktop "encyclopedia."

I am not sure how the hypertext capabilities of the Internet fit in here. Wikipedia currently does not feel very hypertext-like to me. But then, pace Ted Nelson, I'm still not sure how I feel about hypertext. One humble thing that hypertext ought to do, IMHO, is to improve the presentation of things that are traditionally presented in print as footnotes and sidebars.

What I'd like to have is an encyclopedia article that, at first glance, is a well-written, short, smooth summary of the minimum amount of detail I'd like to know, yet has a UI that allows me to expand the parts I'm interested in effortlessly. An article that adjusts its depth continuously to the level of interest I have in the topic.

Now, applying this to Wikipedia. Because of Wikipedia's nature, I believe it is inevitable that Wikipedia's coverage will always be highly uneven, varying with contributors' personal level of interest in a topic, subtopic, or sub-sub-topic. Maybe that's good, maybe that's bad, but it's likely to be the way things are. It seems to me that today the typical good Wikipedia article is uniformly well-written and factual, but quite uneven in coverage and depth of its subtopics.

In an uncontroversial, factual article that's not a big problem. In a controversial article, the controversies attract attention and result in a lot of detail getting accumulated quickly. I thought that Microsoft's stance about the File_Allocation_Table being patented warranted a mention, and put in a short paragraph about it; within hours, the section had expanded to the point where it is now about half of the entire article. Well, that section is good. It's factual and its well-written. You wouldn't want to throw it away. But it doesn't look right to me.

I fantasize that an article that includes controversial topics should have some kind of top-level view in which the controversial topics are given their proper weight relative to the noncontroversial ones, but in which it is possible to "drill down" effortlessly into a footnote or whatever to examine the details. I think this might be what Cunctator is after, too.

The problem is that I don't think the technical underpinnings of HTML or Wikipedia really lend themselves to this. I don't want a decent long article fragmented. Perhaps this is because Wikipedia articles are full of links, they all look alike, and I can't tell which of them are going to get me to big juicy pieces that amount to continuations of the article and which are going to get me to silly little stubs that are unrelated to the article. And if the fantasy can't be realized given the present structure, I don't think long articles should be chopped up into index-card-sized fragments in the hope that someday in the future someone will implement virtual glue that lets us reassemble them to our personal taste.

I do see some validity, when a controversial section expands out of proportion, to replacing it with a good short summary and a link to a detailed article about the controversy. I do not agree that this necessarily amounts to "creating two NPOV articles instead of one." Any short summary is not going to be able to capture the nuances and details, and by itself is unlikely to win consensus agreement. However, if it is obvious that its purpose is to summarize enough about the controversy to let people know whether they should read the full account, people might be willing to let a reasonably OK summary stand.

The second point is that I (still) believe that devoting e.g. half of an article to a controversy is in itself not neutral. Why does moving it to another article change things? The answer is that it changes things because in Wikipedia there is no visual overview of the whole encyclopedia. In a print encyclopedia, one would be surprised if one saw that the bindings were labelled Aar-Bel, Bel-Cad, Cad-Cag, Cag-Cal, Cal-Cam, Cam-Can, Can-Cap, Cap-Fin, Fin-Zym. But in Wikipedia, variations in degree of coverage across articles are invisible, whereas variations in degree of coverage within articles are highly visible.

Just my $0.02. Dpbsmith 13:47, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Excellent thoughts. We do have a few tools to give a hint when links "are going to get me to big juicy pieces that amount to continuations of the article and which are going to get me to silly little stubs that are unrelated to the article". The two methods in practice are to do

History of X

Main Article: [[History of X]]

and to use bolded links:

The Santorum affair occured...

I have a strong personal preference for bolding. See also this revision of 9-11 (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=September_11%2C_2001_Terrorist_Attacks&oldid=28842), this revision of US (http://en2.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=United_States&oldid=158914), and this revision of US (http://en2.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=United_States&oldid=166996) for some alternate approaches. --The Cunctator 17:46, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I understand that Rick Santorum is a political figure, and even if he says some controversial things, he should be entitled to a page free of garbage. The question is, when somebody searches Wikipedia for Santorum, what should the definition be? In the English language definition is a technique to clarify words and their meanings to a reader. Since the definition for Santorum has been coined as a frothy mixture of you know what, it should be defined on its own page so the reader can clearly understand the definition for Santorum. That page should be linked to Rick Santorum's page to distinguish the differences between the two. SallyJBarnes

Welcome to Wikipedia Sally. I suggest you read talk:santorum first to see the previous discussions over this point. Angela . 09:36, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)

You've come to the right place, Sally. On Wikipedia, issues like that are discussed at book length. ;-) —Eloquence

Is there a need for neutrality?

I am somewhat puzzled by the recurring attempts to find something "good" that Senator Santorum has said or done in order to be able to include it in the article and to "balance" his hateful, offensive and stupid comments about gay people and privacy. While a "neutral" and "balanced" stance for editing an encyclopedia is absolutely necessary, there seems to be a misunderstanding on the nature of "neutrality" here.

Writing a "neutral and balanced" article should not lead to the "net impression" on the reader's side that the person described is "neutral, possessing exactly the same amount of traits [or past actions] that evoke sympathy as those that evoke antipathy". If that was the aim, how would an article on Hitler have to look?

IMO it is good to report events without bias. But if someone has done a thing stupid, obnoxious, cruel or, on the other hand, beneficiary to the world, caring and good, the encyclopedia article on that person should not be hamstrung by a vain search for good or bad things to include for reasons of a misunderstood "balance".

I do not know whether I will visit this page later, so I would appreciate feedback at cobweb@gmx.net

cobweb

While I agree with what you're saying, I don't think that "balance" is the principal bone of contention here. The main argument about the "Santorum" page seems to be whether or not the (now largely forgotten) movement by Dan Savage to coin a word "santorum" to describe a sexual byproduct is appropriate material for an encyclopedia entry, whether it merits a redirect, or whether it needs to be mentioned on a page devoted to Savage and his work and nowhere else. (Anyone with the slightest iota of common sense, liberal or conservative, should immediately know what the right answer is here. To pretend that Dan Savage's remarks have absolutely any relevance to Rick Santorum's political career is to pretend that any semi-memorable political insult that has been semi-widely disseminated in any way is relevant to any politician's career.) Thunderbunny

A lot of time has passed since Santorum's remarks. Can we remove the NPOV warning now? Dan Savage's definition has no place in this article but I think the link here is fine. Aside from that, the idea that we need to dig up "good news" about Santorum in order to balance the controversy doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Any objection to removing the NPOV warning? Rhobite 19:00, Jul 27, 2004 (UTC)

Aspires to number two (introduction)

I trimmed this from the intro, right after the note about him being the third ranking Republican in the Senate...

...though he aspires to number two.

This is pretty uninformative, and even a little confusing. What is the title of the number two position, and is it worth mentioning that an obviously ambitious person seeks more power? I'm only explaining this because it was in the introduction. AdamRetchless 17:33, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

LGBT rights cat

I re-inserted this category--it pretty clearly applies to Santorum. If the category were to be deleted, we could justify its removal, but not until then. Meelar (talk) 23:08, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

Weird Chronology

In September of 2004, Santorum stated his intention to run for United States Senate Republican Whip in 2006. However, he lost by a one-vote margin. He already lost in the future? Huh? --Mtrisk 02:26, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

My revert

I reverted the changes made by 210.xx.xxx.xx (the anon IP on May 31, 2005). They violated the neutrality policy, attacking Santorum over a controversy which the article already covered. Meelar (talk) 20:49, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

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