US Presidential Election

[RJensen]

The mood of the country is the really exciting part of the story. Democracy is finding out what the mood is and what people want. (Notice how Romney changed his message overnight to match the economic mood.)   Indeed one poll and one pundit will not suffice (I use LOTS of polls and pundits myself)

[Robert_W_King]

The mood of the country is the really exciting part of the story. Democracy is finding out what the mood is and what people want. (Notice how Romney changed his message overnight to match the economic mood.)   Indeed one poll and one pundit will not suffice (I use LOTS of polls and pundits myself)

It's unencyclopedic though.

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

This is why a more newsy section is needed. I think it is important to make a distinction between news [the ephemera] and the encyclopaedic things.

[RJensen]

Explaining the complexity of the election is encyclopedic.  It's an unusually complicated but important phenomenon. It's changing every day, which makes coverage both difficult and more important to our readers.

[Robert_W_King]

Explaining the complexity of the election is encyclopedic.  It's an unusually complicated but important phenomenon. It's changing every day, which makes coverage both difficult and more important to our readers.

Covering hyberbole, opinion, rhetoric, and mudslinging is not our responsibility.

[Pat_Palmer]

Hey Richard,

I am in violent agreement with you about some things.

Election analysis IS interesting, and I urge you to write about it--somewhere else!  I'm just of the opinion that we not to use the Citizendium articles as the location of punditry and spin type references, and so far I'm one of several voices in agreement with that, and you are pretty much a lone dissenter in wanting to include it here.

Everyone seems to agree that it would lead to a tiring amount of controversy to turn ourselves into a sort of news reporting agency doing daily analysis, although we do want to record the results of polls after they occur.  We just don't want to get into the business of advocating and influencing BEFORE votes take place.

Start a blog?  Give me the URL and I'll gladly go and read it.   

- Pat

[Aleta Curry]

I am in violent agreement with you 

I really like that.  Much better than "I'm in violent disagreement".  Can I use it?  I'm going to try it out on my husband later--he'll probably keel over in shock!

This is why a more newsy section is needed. I think it is important to make a distinction between news [the ephemera] and the encyclopaedic things.

Start a blog?  Give me the URL and I'll gladly go and read it.   

um...folks...just throwing this out...is there any reason why we can't start a CZ US Election newsblog?

[Zachary Pruckowski]

I am in violent agreement with you 

I really like that.  Much better than "I'm in violent disagreement".  Can I use it?  I'm going to try it out on my husband later--he'll probably keel over in shock!

This is why a more newsy section is needed. I think it is important to make a distinction between news [the ephemera] and the encyclopaedic things.

Start a blog?  Give me the URL and I'll gladly go and read it.   

um...folks...just throwing this out...is there any reason why we can't start a CZ US Election newsblog?

A reason for not doing that would be putting our name on analysis [ephemera is the new term, apparently] when we're an encyclopedia.  It might not look good to have the CZ newsblog and also the encyclopedia.  It's not really our mission, and only tangentially related to our mission.  I'm not convinced that that's a deal-breaker, I'm just saying it's an issue.  I personally think it could help attract us attention.

If you want to do that, make another thread, or write to CZ-L, or nudge Dr. Sanger or something.  But this thread isn't the place to start that discussion (not trying to be mean, just trying to stay on topic)


I think Pat Palmer is exactly right - there's a lot of stuff that's interesting and worth knowing that might not precisely belong in our articles.

[RJensen]

Users want an encyclopedia to be encyclopedic.  They read the headlines every day and can turn to CZ for an intelligent, in-depth coverage of the people involved.

We don't spin the news here or pretend to be pundits. So please avoid the insults. We analyze and report on very important, very complicated, fast changing events regarding a major election. The style is pretty much the same as the CZ articles on Abe Lincoln or FD Roosevelt or Napoleon or Isaac Newton.  I take it the critics don't read those articles as none of them have ever complained. As for expertise, I am an expert on American elections, and am regularly an election  analyst at the social science conventions (including the 2008 Social Science History convention this fall).

People who dislike politics can read up on mathematics at CZ and never be bothered with voters, elections or issues.  But they shouldn't block the users from solid encyclopedic coverage of those matters.

ps Actually I do have a blog (an edited daily email list, conservativenet). It rarely overlaps with my CZ articles.

[Denis Cavanagh]

and you are pretty much a lone dissenter in wanting to include it here.

I disagree. I support keeping track of the election for now. When the election is finally over it can split to several articles (Such as US Primary 2008, perhaps even an article for 'Obamamania'?) For now its important to keep a record of whats going on, and if someone is willing to update it, where's the harm?

I say keep up the good work Richard.

[Robert_W_King]

Richard you are failing to understand the distinction between an encyclopedia and a news journal.  We are not a news journal that keeps up with every little thing posted about candidates opinions, what they say, who thinks who-did-what and who-said-what-about-whom; we are not a record of gossip and conjecture.

It doesn't matter that these things are "factual" in the sense that they in fact did happen (we know that they did and there are records of it), they simply do not belong on an encyclopedia.

[RJensen]

Encyclopedias cover all important facts necessary to understand the real world.  The presidential election in the US is very important and should be covered. 

Robert King is totally wrong to assume we try to cover "every little thing"--we reject well over 99% of the election news and report what in out judgment is the important fraction of 1%. (I would estimate the news media generate several hundred thousands words of unique text every week on this election. We use less than 1000 words per week.)  How do we select? Ah, that is where expertise and experience comes into play--factors that CZ makes high priority.

[Denis Cavanagh]

Richard you are failing to understand the distinction between an encyclopedia and a news journal.  We are not a news journal that keeps up with every little thing posted about candidates opinions, what they say, who thinks who-did-what and who-said-what-about-whom; we are not a record of gossip and conjecture.

It doesn't matter that these things are "factual" in the sense that they in fact did happen (we know that they did and there are records of it), they simply do not belong on an encyclopedia.

Basically what I think of this is, where's the harm? Really? Someone is willing to add to it as this thing moves along. We are after all a building site. People should be allowed to be 'bold' one way or the other.

And another thing; Lay off the man. He's an expert in this area for Gods sake.

[Robert_W_King]

The harm is that it puts us in a position of supporting bias, which is a no-no.  This kind of thing really belongs on another type of space, or blog.

[Pat_Palmer]

Richard,

Would you please start a new article called "Presidential Campaign 2008" or some such and use it for the kind of blow-by-blow analysis that you are good at?  Then, we can add a link under the presidential campaign section of each candidate's article, AND we can keep the article fairly clear of ongoing election coverage.

If you will do this, we might move some of the existing duplicated material in Clinton and Obama, for example, to that article where you could work on polishing it.  And then in those articles we'll point out to your article.

That also avoids duplicating the same material across all the articles.  In the meantime, I think we should go ahead and publicize the policy of intending to limit the candidate articles to biography and hard election results.

Hopefully this will make everyone happy, or at least, less unhappy.

Zach, would you care to help publish some kind of policy on handling of candicate pages, explaining also that Richard has started a special article for campaign stuff?

Regards,

Pat