Talk:Occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge

Use of informants

There are some interesting facts not included in the article yet, on the use of informants, brought up in the trial: [1] [2] It might be good to include them, especially once the trail is over or once court documents can be accessed to find additional sources for verification. --BurritoBazooka ^Talk Contribs 11:52, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

The judge has blocked the names of 15 informants, but they were leaked to a blogger ostensibly by a defendant or the defense. Nine were on the reservation. Activist (talk) 08:19, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Where were Finicum's hands at the moment he was shot

This is a popular contention with many police shootings. However there is some evidence this is the case. I have cited this article: http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/04/ammon_bundy_to_challenge_autho.html Foia req (talk) 05:36, 9 August 2017 (UTC) actually it turns out I copied the wrong link http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/03/oregon_standoff_fbi_lie_uncove.html Foia req (talk) 05:37, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Unless I'm totally missing it, that source article does not say anything about Finicum being shot while he had his hands up. If you could copy/paste quote the section you believe supports that contention, that would make things easier. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 05:39, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

The article links to this video and does discuss it. Or it may be some weird cache glitch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH4PInHFfOc This video shows a window shattering while Finicum had his hands up. I will refrain from making further edits since this is a bit odd. Foia req (talk) 05:42, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

The article says that a shot was fired at the vehicle, shattering the glass and impacting the vehicle, and that an FBI agent was being investigated for allegedly lying about firing the round, but it doesn't say that shot hit Finicum or was responsible for his death. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 05:45, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

In addition, this particular video is only one of many floating around, and it only shows the shot(s?) that missed when Finicum exited the truck. Go watch the full thing, with audio. You'll understand then that the shots in this video are not the shots we need to talk about when we describe "Finicum shot with hands ______?_______". Also, I changed the section heading, per our rules (WP:TPG) which require neutraly phrased headings. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:17, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

I saw the drone video a few days after the shooting. If memory serves, it was taken well at first above and then from west of the road, beginning from when Finicum was stopped, just beyond the first checkpoint or roadblock. He was there a few moments. A male passenger got out. Then he drove north, rapidly away from the roadblock toward the next roadblock which was unseen, maybe a mile north and around a bend, with no one in visible pursuit. After he buried the crew cab in the deep snow in a shallow gully on the southbound shoulder while trying to drive around the roadblock, he exited the vehicle and started moving toward the rear of his vehicle and uphill away from the pickup. It was up the slope, toward a state trooper whom he realized was advancing toward him. I think the trooper appeared to be armed with a stun weapon, though it looked like it could have been a shotgun, and he was crouching slightly. LaVoy was raising his arms together, up to about shoulder height, and then back down, near to and then away from his pockets on both sides. He was shot as he twisted away from the road and he fell away from the shooter and toward the trooper advancing downhill. The two shots fired by the FBI agent from the road at the crew cab were not to be seen, in that video. I expect you still should be able to find that video on line. There was some video taken inside the back seat of the crew cab as well, by a female passenger, I think. Activist (talk) 20:04, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

There's no need to try to remember, just read the article and follow the links. Also, if we interpret the video to tell people what it shows, that might be WP:Original research and that's silly when we have so many excellent secondary WP:Reliable sources that the interpretation for us. We report what they say it shows, rather than what we see. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 21:36, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

@NewsAndEventsGuy: @NorthBySouthBaranof: I spent quite a bit of time looking for a reliable source that said Finicum had his hands up, and found just one mention. However, there is a difference between having one's hands raised to shoulder height for less than a second, and raising them completely as a sign of surrender. Finicum raised them three times and quickly lowered them again, and was shot in the back three times. I suspect that the third and fatal shot hit him when he was lying on the ground or was falling there, as it hit just above his hip and went through his heart, according to the sources and stories gathered at Oregon Live. The state police officer who was close in front of him up the slope had holstered his weapon and it was a stun gun in his hands. I'm guessing it was in an obvious attempt to take him alive, though the FBI HRT agent who shot at him from the road as he was just exiting and hit the top of the car, apparently intended to kill him, but missed. Finicum also had told the LEOs numerous times to either shoot him or to proceed to John Day to talk to the sheriff. I also noticed in the existing text said that "twelve" defendants had pleaded guilty, but there was no such claim in the cited sources. There was a statement that eleven defendants had pleaded guilty in a story this week, so I changed the "twelve" to "many" and used the number of guilty pleas from the reliable source as eleven in the story about the sentencing of Travis Cox. Activist (talk) 13:44, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for making an RS-based correction to the text. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 17:13, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

@NewsAndEventsGuy: @NorthBySouthBaranof:Actually, there was a hatnote directing readers to the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom article, with a request at the Occupation page that the CCF article be updated. I went there and added sentences for six defendants, including citations, and discovered that a dozen defendants actually have pleaded guilty, referencing the table at that article, so the original number was correct, though not supported by the existing citations. I updated the lede to reflect that info. Activist (talk) 07:07, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Update on defendants

I've made a substantial number of edits to bring the article up to date, and read a great deal of the cited stories, but have not done one necessary task. Without comparing the list of indictments of the 27 defendants with the resolution of the individual cases, I only have accounted for the results for 24 defendants: Seven acquittals, charges dropped in one case, at least 12 pleaded guilty, and four convicted at trial. I'm not sure about the fate of the other three. I hope someone will do a chart, not necessarily for posting which is a very time-consuming process, though it would be very helpful, and might thereby resolve this discrepancy. There's a posted chart in a similarly complex case, the "Fat Leonard Scandal," which could serve as a template. Activist (talk) 08:34, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Poor Citation

Citation 31, the one cited in population and area statistics, links to an active website with a very poor and possibly broken template. In its current state it may be better to locate an alternative citation, this data should be available relatively easily. I'm not very experienced with managing citation text and the source code interface so I am personally nervous about working on it, anyone want to manage this one or should I handle it? Jyggalypuff (talk) 18:24, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your interest! Unsolicited advice tip #1.... learn how to create "Diff" for use on talk pages, so people know what you are talking about. (Click the link in prior sentence). To link to a specific reference, notice that some other editor could change the article and thereby reorder the reference numbers. So if you just say "31" tomorrow that one might be 33 or 29. So to lock it in, first tell your browser to show the full url of the web page. Notice the url for the article. Now go to "Version history", and click the most recent version of the article in the list. The text that displays is identical to what you were just looking at (since you clicked the most recent version) (((BUT))) the url has become longer. It now contains text that points to this specific version. Now go to the reference and click on it. The url should now point to (A) the specific article version fixed in time and (B) the specific reference number. When I do this, I get this url (which I will display using WP:NOWIKI markup

https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Occupation_of_the_Malheur_National_Wildlife_Refuge&oldid=801311580#cite_note-CrombieCountyProfile-31

And I can link to that reference like this.

Anyway..... it seems the url was correct except it was choking on https but seems to like http. Fixed. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:20, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Anti-Government Militias

I question the neutrality of "anti-government militias." Who's declaring them anti-government, but their detractors? For example, on the "About" page of the III %ers website at http://www.iiisecurityforce.com/about.html the group discusses how militias are often viewed as anti-government, but that they don't consider themselves to be so.

So, if this article is neutral on that point, why are we using the words of their detractors but not the words of the militia group itself?

Also, what defines "anti-government?" The groups, though many people may not like them, organize and govern themselves. They have leaders, protocol, and a hierarchy. What is that but government? BudJillett (talk) 20:42, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

We base what we say on what reliable sources say in preference to what the militia group says about itself. This is basic Wikipedia policy: see WP:V and WP:NPOV. Bondegezou (talk) 16:38, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, Bodegezou, for the guidance. I checked WP:V and found "The best sources have a professional structure in place for checking or analyzing facts, legal issues, evidence, and arguments." So, if an article is written about a militia group calling it "anti-government," but the militia group's "About" page states that it is not anti-government, wouldn't this be bad fact-checking? And therefore not a very reliable source? BudJillett (talk) 17:02, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

The militia group's own "About" page is a primary source and there are lots of problems with primary sources: see WP:PRIMARY. If a newspaper article (or a Wikipedia article) contradicts a primary source, that could be for very good reasons and we trust reliable sources to make those judgments. Wikipedia is very clear in its policies: we use reliable, secondary sources over primary sources. Bondegezou (talk) 17:10, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, Bondegezou, for the informative dialog. In reading some of the source articles, it seems to me that the term "anti-government" originated from opinion rather than fact. Be it the opinion of the local Sheriff, or of the reporter herself. However, I see that following Wikipedia's guidelines makes it totally legit for it to appear in the Wikipedia article, and does not seem to be against policy as you've pointed out. I often see biased terminology from sources that most (including myself) would consider reliable, such as CNN, TIME, even REUTERS on occasion slips up and uses biased terms. I wonder how we, as a community, can keep mainstream media bias (where it might occur) from migrating into Wikipedia? BudJillett (talk) 17:33, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

We can't. By foundational definition, if you believe that all mainstream media are biased, our articles will reflect that bias because our articles are based upon what is verifiably published in reliable sources. We have a responsibility to reflect multiple points of view, but we are required to put due weight on viewpoints based on their prevalence in reliable sources. That is, fringe viewpoints will not receive as much space or credence as mainstream ones. The idea that armed militias taking over government facilities are not anti-government is, charitably, a fringe one. Therefore, our article will reflect the mainstream consensus of sources. If you object to that, you quite simply object to the very idea of Wikipedia. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 17:39, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

An alternative response would be... Go take this matter up with CNN, Time, Reuters etc. rather than here. Bondegezou (talk) 17:45, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

I think it's generally accepted that all media is biased to varying extents. Bias sneaks in everywhere, and often unintentionally. I agree that those biases are reflected in Wikipedia articles. I think it's natural for that to occur. This particular article seems to have a higher degree of bias than others on Wikipedia, which I have usually found to be pleasantly neutral. "Anti-government" stood out to me. Especially at "By late fall, local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies had become aware that members of anti-government militias had started to relocate to Harney County." This left me with the impression that the militia groups had formed around a professed anti-government agenda, but in reading their pages I found this not to be the case. In fact, the Three Percenters go into detail about why they are not anti-government. I understand we can't quote the militia's web page because they are a primary source. Still, I believe we should remove the misleading adjective. It leads people to believe the groups are self-proclaimed anti-government groups when they are making no such proclamation. BudJillett (talk) 21:07, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Nomenclature

@NorthBySouthBaranof:Twenty of the articles from reliable sources cited in the Wikipedia article on the Occupation use the word, "Militant" in their very titles, to describe the occupiers. Allowing the article to be scrubbed and sanitized by instead calling the militants "protesters," is simply absurd. Many carried pocket copies of W. Cleon Skousen's bizarre interpretations of the constitution with them. In my opinion, that ignoring of over 230 years of jurisprudence constitutes a prima facie case for their position as "anti-government." Activist (talk) 23:21, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

@NorthBySouthBaranof: The main article does refer to the occupiers as militants, which you seem to be in agreement with. The word "protesters" is used only in reference to what was imprinted on the signs by the roadblocks. BudJillett (talk) 23:51, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

I am in agreement with referring to the militants as "militants." However, an IP editor from Dover, NH, twice replaced the term "militants" with "protesters" over 100 times in the article's text. After editor NorthBySouthBaranof reverted those changes, twice, I registered my concurrance with the long-time editor's restorations. Activist (talk) 08:10, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying. I counted the citations and indeed 20 of them refer to the occupiers as "militants" in their very titles. Only 11 refer to them as "protesters" (or Bundy as "protest leader") and only 11 refer to them as "group," so I see where "militant" wins out. BudJillett (talk) 19:10, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Page protection warranted?

@NorthBySouthBaranof:, @BudJillett:, @MB298:, I think this article could benefit from autoconfirmed editor page protection. The last two edits that were made by IP editor 67.169.209.150, from the vicinity of Corvallis, OR, were vandalism, otherwise known as "good faith" here at Wikipedia. The six prior IP edits were made by an edit warring IP editor from the vicinity of Dover, N.H. Activist (talk) 13:39, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

@Activist: I have requested semi-protection. MB298 (talk) 23:41, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't know. I kinda like Wikipedia's generally open policy. I checked the edit history and I don't see the page is being edited all that much. I also have no problem with assuming good faith, at least on the more recent edits. I agree the reversions were warranted since the edits did not accurately reflect the cited sources, and the editor offered no new citations to backup his or her edits. The comment in the edit summary was a bit dubious (in addition to being a bit cryptic!), but I still tend to write it off as a user under-educated about Wikipedia's policies. Maybe if that IP does it again, offer some education on his or her talk page? I've got this page on my watch list so, if I catch it, I'll try to point that person to the correct Wikipedia policy. BudJillett (talk) 02:34, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

I disagree in large part, because it's not hard to register a username and become involved. Registering doesn't make Wikipedia not "open". It's still free and super easy. But let's face cold hard realism: 99% of anonymous IP editors are hit and runs. They aren't looking for consensus, they aren't looking to cite reliable sources, and they aren't following established procedure. If they really have an invested interest in Wikipedia, they can register a name and get involved.

One thing I've learned about being around the great outdoors of the west, is that the general public has no respect for anything that is accessible and convenient. Make it one step harder (in this case, still easy by registering) and you will weed out 90% of those who are looking to vandalize and deface. Leitmotiv (talk) 22:06, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

All reasonable points. I wonder, though, how do they apply specifically to protecting this page, as opposed to making registration a requirement for Wikipedia as a whole? I've spent the last few weeks doing some patrolling as a way to learn more about Wikipedia, and during that time I've seen several egregious cases of obvious vandalism. Sometimes these were repeated onslaughts to a particular page over a number of days. But I just don't see that here. BudJillett (talk) 22:53, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

I was an editor of this page, in some function or another, from its inception, and if my memory serves me, it had vandalism/revert wars. What I suspect this page will go through is much like other articles now - because the content is politically charged and controversial, people will routinely come in to edit it to suit their personal views rather than take the due diligence to back it up with reliable sources. This article has seen that consistently, if not in any inundating way recently. I think this article is similar to other hot button articles where it would behoove the editors to lighten their work load by enforcing protective measures against the never-ending onslaught of anonymous editors who have no intent of improving wikipedia, but bending wikipedia to their own views. Leitmotiv (talk) 23:26, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

@NorthBySouthBaranof:, @BudJillett:, @MB298:, Thanks for making the request. I disagree about the need, obviously. There are editors on Wikipedia who are little more than graffiti artists, "taggers,"interjecting vulgarities here and there, for instance. It's obvious what they're doing and that's not what's happening here, of course, but it shares a spectrum with what is. There are others who share an unreality and feel that by erasing reliably sourced, but unpleasant to them text, that they somehow have put things right. Finicum's unfortunate death was classic "suicide by cop." All those erasures and substitutions (and they've been going on for a while), won't change that. Autoconfirmation won't stop that but presents some impediments, especially for those impulsive readers/posters, that will make that situation a little more difficult, so should be welcomed, in my opinion. Registering as a confirmed user isn't all that big a burden. Activist (talk) 03:00, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone, for clarifying. Does moving forward with semi-protecting this page, for the reasons so far given, square with WP:PREEMPTIVE? BudJillett (talk) 00:20, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

This goes beyond vandalism and falls mostly under content dispute - the two most common examples are changing "militants" to "protesters" and often changing the facts surrounding Finnicum running away from the barricade and reaching into his jacket, to some other conspiracy theory nonsense. It's an ongoing issue. I foresee that it will not change. Semi protection for a year would help and it could be reevaluated at that time on trial basis. Leitmotiv (talk) 01:20, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Occupied or Seized

Clearly, use of the term "seized" rather than "occupied" in the lede is a far more accurate descriptor of what happened at Malheur. I am reminded of the term, as defined in Wiktionary, "terminate with extreme prejudice" which was substituted for the accurate "assassinate," "execute" or "murder" during the Viet Nam war. Activist (talk) 23:16, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Honestly, neither one seems very loaded to me. They seem like synonyms and I don't see wildly differing connotations.

wikt:seize: To deliberately take hold of; to grab or capture. Or, to take possession of (by force, law etc.).

wikt:occupy: To have, or to have taken, possession or control of (a territory). VQuakr (talk) 23:34, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

• Seized (A) Lots of RSs use seized; (B) Each have various connotations. The context for this article is, in broad strokes, political direct action. I've been around that culture a bit, and the common language I am personally familiar with talks about "occupying" offices that are acknowledged to belong to some authority and the premise of the action is to return control of those spaces to those authorities at the actions conclusion. In this case, the militants stated purpose was to wrest control of the lands from the federal government and (re)distribute them to the locals. That's their own stated goal as reported in the RSs. Very different from some college kids "occupying" the university president's office over divesting from fossil fuels. Example "In a sign of growing tensions, students occupied and shut down the university finance building last week and said there could be “no more business as usual whilst the university remains complicit in the destruction of the planet and vulnerable populations across the globe”." https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/apr/23/cambridge-university-urged-again-to-end-fossil-fuel-investments In such actions there is no intention of keeping such spaces or putting third parties into control. The occupiers return control and acknowledge the rightful "owners". So no, I don't think are equivalent terms at all. Yes I know other RSs say "occupy". Where we have competing words supported by different RSs we should use our judgment to describe the militants stated purpose - take control, keep control, pass control to others. Er go, "seized"...."and get lost, feds)"... NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:56, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

@NorthBySouthBaranof:, @BudJillett:, @MB298:,@Possums:, @L.Tak:, @NewsAndEventsGuy:. If the words were simply synonymous, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Without going all "Alice/Humpty Dumpty," here, the terms were more synonymous in Old Latin. Today, they'e not. When the Nazis occupied northern France, it was a seizure. The French had little choice in the matter or the description, though they were allowed to remain. One can "occupy" a flat, with an agreement with the landlord, or and uninhabited or unclaimed island or deserted building, perhaps. But the refuge was taken over, "seized" by heavily armed interlopers with no intention of surrendering it back to government stewardship. The legitimate occupants were expelled. Visitors, by virtue of the confrontation, were unwelcomed. If someone, with no legitimate claim to possession, came to your home and threw you out, would you say they had "occupied" your home, or "seized" it? Activist (talk) 00:34, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the email and ping... FYI in such short threads, I usually assume the other parties have pages watchlisted, and that's how I find out about new stuff posted on this one. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 01:00, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

I'd call it "occupied" by squatters, but "seized" by a judge. In other words, "seized" connotes a legitimate albeit unpleasant formal seizure, whereas "occupy" connotes an illegitimate unwelcome occupation of the premises. Also note that the article is called "Occupation of…", not "Seizure of…" — JFG ^talk 01:06, 31 July 2018 (UTC)