Talk:Matthew Daniels

You can, and should, simultaneously cover this guy's checkered history as well as his present to provide an accurate biography of this living person. Any mention of his recent and current work cannot immediately be disregarded as promotion given... well, it's not - independent research, research institutions as an academic, the various publications are the work that need to be captured on the record.

It's a summary of the kind of access, publications, and activism that a bigot can go on to do.

Is that not valuable to the historical record? Or is it more important for an editor - with clear bias User:Praxidicae - to cut history down to fit their view? Secretlyasquirrel (talk) 23:26, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

@Secretlyasquirrel I would like to invite you to read WP:NPA. Thanks. PICKLEDICAE🥒 12:26, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Please identify the personal attack in the above. You won't find one.

I'd suggest perusing Wikipedia:Systemic bias "Instead of removing cited work, you should be questioning uncited information." Something that does not mesh with removing cited, neutral reference work of this person's continued influence in the public sphere. Secretlyasquirrel (talk) 13:40, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

I suggest you look up what systemic bias is because I'm 100% sure it doesn't exist against rich white men. But do go on. PICKLEDICAE🥒 14:21, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

I'm the editor that has done most of the rewriting of this article over the last year or so, including removal of some content related to his current career. My goal was not an exposé of his "checkered history" as a "bigot" or whatever. Rather, it was to write an encyclopedic article in line with Wikipedia's guidelines. (I had originally nominated this article for deletion because the complete lack of mention of any of his anti-same-sex marriage related career was completely absent, but it withdrew the nomination when I realized there was in fact a wealth of reliable, independent, secondary source coverage of him in that capacity.

The need to provide an accurate biography of someone is balanced with the need to be verifiable as an encyclopedia (WP:V) and the maxim that Wikipedia avoid being promotional. Praxidicae reverted your edit because the structure and content comes off as highly promotional, especially from an account with just a handful of edits — all more or less related to this particular person (please note that if you have a conflict of interest, such as a personal or professional relationship with the subject, you need to declare as much and should not edit the article directly; see WP:COI).

Not every facet of someone's career is notable. For example, the Human Rights Network YouTube channel is almost certainly not significant enough to warrant inclusion. The sole source cited for it appears to be a typo-ridden blog post discussing a survey that has not been published in any sort of venue, peer-reviewed or otherwise. Likewise, the only details of the MLK Educational Initiative curriculum I can find are from a single op-ed cowritten by Daniels. There is no evidence that it has been adopted at any significant scale. Wikipedia is not a resume for cataloging the career moves and projects of an individual.

@Praxidicae is right to draw your attention to the policy on personal attacks. Wikipedians, including yourself, must presume good faith and not insinuate that someone is here to e.g. "cut history down to fit their view" without strong evidence. You're more than welcome to contest their view and mine of the content you proposed, and that sort of debate is an indispensable feature of Wikipedia, but that requires the assumption of good faith.WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 19:08, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Creating a dedicated space here on the talk page to invite NPL2022 to discuss their proposed edits rather than continue the cycle of additions and reversions without response to feedback. Please keep in mind that discussion of changes that other editors may disagree with is a key part of the process in Wikipedia. There are several reasons I reverted your most recent edit. To highlight two major issues:

• Copy-pasting content from other sources is an unacceptable copyright violation. See Wikipedia:Copying text from other sources.
  • You copied content directly from Good of All without citation. Even with citation, word-for-word copying is inappropriate.
  • The content you added along with the entire edit will likely be struck from the history by an admin after they review the copyright request I entered — copyright issues are very serious, and are one of the cases when otherwise transparent page histories can be wholly deleted. Please cite sources and avoid plagiarism in any future edits.
• You should presume against removing well sourced information unless there is a valid reason to do so.
  • Removing "former activist against same-sex marriage" from the lead is unjustified; even if he has since moved on from this role, the vast majority of secondary sources discussing Daniels cover him in this capacity, thus, this is very reasonably the reason he is most notable. A Wikipedia article should approximately cover aspects of a subject in proportion to an aspects coverage in reliable, independent sources. See WP:VOICE, in particular: Achieving what the Wikipedia community understands as neutrality means carefully and critically analyzing a variety of reliable sources and then attempting to convey to the reader the information contained in them fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without editorial bias. (Emphasis added.) Daniels does not appear to be well known as a human rights activist; most of the content discussing him in such a capacity was written by himself or organizations/institutions affiliated with him. Thus, the same-sex marriage activism deserves a prominent place in the article, including the opening sentences.
  • Likewise, removing entire sources for no apparent reason — as you did with this FT article — is not constructive. If you believe the source should be excluded, please explain why.

Additionally, as others have noted on your talk page, your singular focus on this page seems to indicate you have a personal connection with the subject. It is highly discouraged for people to edit articles about themselves or things related to them. There are ways to request edits while avoiding Wikipedia:Conflict of interest issues. Please make use of them, and feel free to ask questions of me if you need help understanding the process. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 03:02, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• MLK Universal Rights Scholarship Launch.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 17:52, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

I removed "counter-terrorism expert" (added in this edit). Nothing in the body of the article supports it, and the ref added in the same edit doesn't support it either. Schazjmd (talk) 17:22, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Why are we removing human rights activist as if it were a copyedit? The sources seem to describe him as being involved in leading human rights organizations and practicing human rights activism. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 18:32, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Do we have any secondary reliable sources that refer to him as a human rights activist? The article is mostly about his attempts to deny human rights to US citizens. Using a self published source gets into Ministry of Truth territory. Very Average Editor (talk) 18:50, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Up through 2006, sure, but this is 17 years later. And in those 17 years, he seems to have plenty coverage in human rights activism related to North Korea and human rights scholarship more broadly. The Penn Law Journal (pg. 50) notes that Daniels has run a network of five academic centers focused on human rights education at higher education institutions in the U.S., U.K. and South Korea. Unless I'm getting someone else with the same name, this seems like someone whose career is presently in human rights work, despite his activism in and prior to 2006. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 18:57, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

The institute he works for calls gay marriage a form of social engineering, and is focused on military intervention into communism. They also claim that the US needs better relations with Putin, and blames Obama for "disrespecting" him and "traditional countries" - in particular for allowing gay people to serve as ambassadors. The iwp believes people have a right to not talk to homosexuals or accept them. I'm not willing to throw all of that into this or the iwp article, but it is pretty obvious "human rights" is doublespeak for the rights of Christians to live in traditional low-right communities. Very Average Editor (talk) 19:09, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

I will admit that I took the Institute of World Politics to be a run-of-the-mill graduate International Relations school when I was looking at this. Can you provide links to the stuff from his current employer that you are describing above? — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 19:16, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Here is an example published by the iwp: [1]. I'd drop some quotes here, but there are so many shocking statements, I will leave it to readers to guffaw on their own. Very Average Editor (talk) 19:30, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

IWP is a standalone grad school closely associated with the American neoconservative movement. I rewrote this article about a year ago. I had nominated it for deletion, but quickly realized I was mistaken — while the article at that time only discussed human rights issues (which, combined with his generic name, yielded relatively few indicators of notability), I soon found the massive amount of intense media coverage of him related to his anti-same-sex marriage activism, which was not mentioned at all in the article at the time.

Ever since then, SPAs periodically pop up and refuse to engage in discussions when trying to remove reference to said activism, in place highlighting the human rights activism and other miscellaneous academic projects and op-eds. The coverage of the same-sex marriage-related work is a much, much more detailed. Still, I think "human rights scholar" might be a better moniker given his position as a professor (and I am not entirely clear what actual activism he has done, in terms of getting things changed or advocating for change, but that is more subjective). WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 21:54, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

I'd be ok with "scholar" rather than "activist" in light of the above. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 02:32, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I'll also add that a closer look at the Penn source makes me a bit wary — it's a Class Notes section for alumni, which I believe are self-submitted, so it's not quite the case that he was independently described as an activist by the Penn Law Journal per se. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 15:39, 7 March 2023 (UTC)