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My comments below are aside from the fact that the article seems somehow to focus on Mark Satin as a personality... Did Mark Satin himself pen it? or perhaps someone who works closely with Mr. Satin? Be that as it may, let me raise some practical issues with the article as it stands:
The article makes it clear that there's been a shift or leap in Mark Satin's thinking, from his "new age politics" days to his "radical middle" days. But the article leaves huge gaps in exploring the rift between his idealistic-if-theoretical days (of new-age politics and new options) and his later (radical middle) thinking.
For instance, what has happened to Satin's thesis that Americans were fatally limited by a psycho/sociological/metaphysical "Six-Sided Prison"? Has the prison de-materilized? Have most Americans freed themselves of it? Or has Satin decided he was simply naive and wrong-headed in emphasizing it? Or does this theory carry over into his later thinking in some way?
Also, the article glosses over important questions about the specifics of politics and the problems politics grapples with: An huge example might be 'What is Satin's concern (if any) as to the fate of workers in an America where industrial production has been increasingly shifted off to Asia?' Remember how good-paying manufacturing jobs have disappeared, being replaced by low-paying service jobs? I'm not claiming that Satin has not dealt with such issues, but saying the article doesn't really address (even in the briefest way) how he looks at them. Joel Russ ( talk) 00:11, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
Satin is an interesting man with some interesting ideas.
Isn't this article about twice as long as it could/should be? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.2.59.54 ( talk) 22:46, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
Who are you in relation to the subject of this biographical article? This project seems a bit bizarre. Mr Satin is a stimulating thinker and quite an activist, but there are hundreds of thousands of these. The story is too long considering the man's impact. Not to say you're doing a poor job in constructing the article. Are you his son or daughter or something?
Babel41 says: "I can guarantee you that my Satin biography would not be ranked amoug the top 3% of bios on Wikipedia if its demanding editors found it to be inappropriate in any way".
Preposterous. The slur against Ann Coulter makes the article worthy of immediate deletion for a number of reasons, predominantly for legal reasons.-- EditorExtraordinaire ( talk) 13:52, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
Your
Featured picture candidate has been promoted Your nomination for
featured picture status,
File:Draft dodgers being counseled 1967.jpg, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate another image, please do so at
Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates.
Makeemlighter (
talk)
22:31, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
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After winning a "Featured Article" award, as this article did on February 16, 2012, it is customary for the nominator or principal author to send a customized "barnstar" to the Wikipedia editors who helped bring the article up to snuff. I thought you'd enjoy seeing the barnstar I sent them, along with some of their replies:
The Helping Hands Barnstar | ||
Dear Dank, Brianboulton, Ealdgyth, Ed, Jimfbleak, Nikkimaria, and Noleander, - I could not have brought the Mark Satin bio up to Featured Article status without the unique contributions (not to mention tact and patience) of each of you. I am probably two to three times your age, and not at home with this technology. But working with you gave me a glimpse of a beautiful 21st century world in which individual initiative, collectively honed, can produce socially (in)valuable work that is also first-rate. God bless! - Babel41 ( talk) 23:48, 16 February 2012 (UTC) |
Actually, Dank, I can't even begin to express my debt to you. At least the Barnstar is a pretty picture. - Babel41 ( talk) 06:47, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
If you are three times my age, you are the world record-holder by a very considerable margin. But thank you for your generous tribute, and congratulations on bringing this fine aticle to featured status. I look forward to its future mainpage appearance. Brianboulton ( talk) 10:05, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Also, from the Featured Articles administrator:
Thanks guys. - Babel41 ( talk) 04:15, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
The article was far from "up to snuff" when it was published. The article included an egregious slur against Republican political commentor Ann Coulter. She was viciously referred to as a "militant". How the editors approving this article as "featured" could allow that word to remain in the article at the time of publishing is indefensible and utterly disgusting.-- EditorExtraordinaire ( talk) 11:25, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
1exec1 - Thank you for adding the "dmy" tag to the Mark Satin article (which would convert all dates to the "4-9-2012" format). I appreciate your attention and concern. However, as the principal writer of the Satin bio, I have removed the tag, for the following reasons:
If Wikipedia ever develops a tag that can convert all dates to the "4 September 2012" format, please let me know. In the meantime, I would prefer that the article remain without the dmy tag. Thanks again for your trouble.- Babel41 ( talk) 20:33, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
{{
Use dmy dates}}
appears to accurately reflect the current status-quo of using NN Month YYYY dates in the article, when viewed as it stands as of August 2012. This tagged is used by other editors (and bots) to know the present format that is in use. —
Sladen (
talk)
23:27, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Draft dodgers being counseled 1967.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on May 14, 2013. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2013-05-14. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. Thanks! — Crisco 1492 ( talk) 23:41, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
I have removed the passage commenting on Neil Seeman's understanding of Mark Satin's worrk. It appeared at the end of the second-to-last paragraph under the "Radical Middle, The Book" sub-section, and it read as follows:
"The author and Canadian businessman Neil Seeman pointed to Satin's work as the intellectual pedigree behind effective post-partisan decision-making in complex policy-making, such as solving childhood obesity."
The Satin article has been designated a "Featured Article" (FA) by Wikipedia's editors. (For background on FAs, click on the bronze star at the upper right hand side of the Satin article.) All challengeable statements in FAs MUST carry citations, including page numbers when the material is in printed form. Moreover, all sources cited must be reputable. At a minimum this means that, except for the biographical subject's (Satin's) own statements, they cannot come from blogs or from self-published books or materials.
In the case of the remved passage above, no source is given. In addition, the statement as it stands is somewhat awkward and extreme. Even Satin's most ardent champions do not claim his work is "the intellectual pedigree behind effective post-partisan decision-making." Generally he is seen as one of several influences on post-partisan thought, as our article alreadty demonstrates at some length. If a special claim on Satin's behalf has been made by Neil Seeman (who is indeed a recognized expert on health care policy in Canada), in a reputable publication, such as HealthcarePolicy magazine or Seeman's recent book on obesity policy for University of Toronto Press, please copy the relevant passage below (along with the page number) and I will characterize it, link to it, and find an appropriate place for it in the article, probably in the "Assessments" section. Thanks!! - Babel41 ( talk) 18:21, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
This is an astonishingly good article, even among the Featured Articles. If the writing were not as concise as it is, it could have been 20% longer without drawing attention from fastidious copy editors. Maintaining NPOV when most of those who write about Satin have there own strong POVs is another of the article's achievements. Congratulations, and thank you, to those contributed to his masterpiece.— Finell 02:21, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
From Jan. 9 through Jan. 13, Michael W. Parker made five attempts to add language to the "Assessment" section of this article that would have referred to its subject, Mark Satin, as a "coward."
Parker's attempts were reverted by four different Wikipedia editors. I was one of them, but I have changed my mind and have created a new second paragraph in the Assessment section that retains Parker's language. Here's why:
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, but it is more than just that. It is also an experiment in democratic editing.
When a summary of the Satin article was featured atop Wikipedfia's Main Page on January 9, it came to the attention of literally millions of people who might never have turned to an article about an anti-Vietnam War activist and visionary political theorist. Because the summary was linked to the article, thousands of such people read the entire article.
Michael Parker may have been one of them. At any rate, Parker noticed what to him was an elephant in the room: Although the article is about a person who is – among other things – a well-known Vietnam War draft evader, the Assessments section did not provide any mention of people's assessment of Satin's draft evasion!
Possibly most of the editors who worked on this article over the years, including me, felt that the article already dealt with that subject sufficiently. Possibly some of us did not want the article to be used as a referendum on draft evasion, or wanted the Assessments section to focus exclusively on what we saw as the more important aspects of Satin's life and work.
But Michael Parker did not see it that way. He insisted that the Assessment section convey what he and many others still feel – that Satin's actions during the Vietnam War were cowardly.
Parker's attempts to inject that perspective were poor. He mangled the opening paragraph of the Assessment section. He did not tell viewers that the sources he was referring to were e-mailers to Satin's website. He did not create a citation that was consistent in form with the 211 other citations in the article. He violated Wikipedia's canonical rule, "Neutral Point of View."
It would be easy to continue to ignore him. But it would be wrong. We must, as the Wikipedia community, be open to listening to what contributors are trying to say; even (or perhaps especially) when they are not as technically adroit as many senior Wikipedia editors.
And for all of Parker's technical faults, he is stubbornly right about the main issue: You cannot fully assess Satin without at least acknowledging some of the emotion, including the negative emotion, that still attaches itself to Satin's draft evasion and counseling, four decades after the fact.
Therefore, I have created a new second paragraph in the Assessment section that briefly captures the polarized assessments of Satin's draft evasion and counseling. That paragraph is (hopefully) consistent with Wikipedia's cardinal rules of Neutral Point of View, No Original Research, and Verifiability - AND it includes the word "coward."
I feel that the Assessment section is now even more factually and emotionally complete - even more Real, to broader ranges of the viewing public - than it was before. - Babel41 ( talk) 01:53, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
I still believe that by removing the "c-word" it allows extreme left liberal bias to remain as a constant and overwhelming theme throughout the article. I doubt there is a single Republican politician or voter, dead or alive, who would agree that this article is politically balanced and unbiased. What is so wrong with the word "coward?" Satin freely admits to being called that word and, who knows, many of the angry e-mailers may have been Democrats. And I would assume there were many e-mailers saying it, not just one or two. (Redacted)-- EditorExtraordinaire ( talk) 10:46, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
(Redacted)
Note that the "c" word is not used. Thank you.
-- EditorExtraordinaire ( talk) 12:38, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
Dank, should all of the italicization of the subheaders be changed then? Some of them were already italicized before I tried to standardize all of them.-- EditorExtraordinaire ( talk) 23:09, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
Thank you, NeilN, for that good explanation. I kept looking at those and was wondering why some were italicized and others were not.-- EditorExtraordinaire ( talk) 23:14, 6 February 2015 (UTC)