Talk:Brendan Eich

Edit war problem in last paragraph under "Mozilla"

The last two revisions, [1] and the reversion after it from MrX, show my attempt to enforce notability and neutrality rules, and a reversion that fails to address either concern while asserting an irrelevancy.

The final paragraph under [2] has grown and suffered edit-wars as editors have tried to make a "he said / she said" collection of quotes, ending in non-neutral, non-notable, and counterfactual assertions or insinuations by Signorile and Chu.

Legally, Prop 8 was never going to "annul" any legally recognized marriages. See [3]. Retroactive law is unconstitutional law. As Domestic partnership in California details, Domestic Partner law in California preceded Prop 8 and was equivalent as far as state vs. federal powers allowed to legal marriage.

MrX, in reverting my attempt to clean up this mess by striking all but Sullivan's notable citation, wrote "This content is backed by several sources". That revert reason is both too vague (which content, Chu's or Signorile's?), and either vacuous (of course they each wrote what they're cited as writing) or wrong (see again [4] and Domestic partnership in California.

The main problem is the non-notability and non-neutrality of an obviously ideological edit war to try to cite partisans against Eich, in order to "have the last word". Just the excessive length of this last paragraph as it became edited to wage this war is a bad sign. Wikipedia editors should know and do better. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1010:b05b:2059:29df:9d46:35de:177 (talk) 19:32, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

The legal arguments about whether Prop 8 would be retroactive or not is not a valid reason for removing commentary of notable people like Signorile. I notice that you did not remove the opinion of Andrew Sullivan though. I think is it valuable to leave these comments in because they are a good sampling of the reactions to Eich's resignation. Notability is a requirement for articles to exist, not for the content in articles. I would only support removing all four comments/quotes is something could be written more generally to convey to readers that Eich was both criticized and supported for his support of Prop 8, and that his (coerced) resignation drew mixed reactions.- MrX 04:20, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

MrX: Let's see your statistical measure of "a good sampling". Subjective axe-grinding by (notable or not; you seem to concede Chu is not) writers, with only one side getting the last word, is neither neutral nor encyclopedic. In any controversy you can find people writing false statements, but such statements do not merit inclusion in Wikipedia.

Proposal: edit the last paragraph to be even longer, linking to [5] to refute Signorine and Chu, to convey to the reader more documented facts relevant to this incident. Who said the only good to serve by larding this paragraph with point/counterpoint quotes, negative ones last, was to "convey to readers that Eich was both criticized and supported"? Why is that one obvious (vacuous, again) result, that controversy draws supporters and detractors, your only concern?

And since you reversed the order in your "criticized and supported" words above from the pro/con order of the paragraph, how would it be if we reverse the order in the article, and end with Sullivan and Friedersdorf? Why do you make selective and weak arguments for something clearly edit-warred into an overlong, agenda-ridden mess of a paragraph? This paragraph "needs improvement", to put it lightly.

Finally, you ignore the substantive difference between (1) Sullivan's point (Eich's conduct on the job was unimpeachable), or Friedersdorf's argument that political punishment via attacks on employment advantage the powerful and disadvantage the weak, on the one hand; and (2) Signorine's invidious comparison of Eich to Donald Sterling, or Chu's similar assumptions by which he brings up interracial marriage as a false equivalence, on the other hand.

Yes, controversy means critics as well as supporters. No, Eich's biographical article is not the place to air these, selectively and with a one-sided order and emphasis.

Cutting all four quotes would be acceptable, in the interest of neutrality. If you don't want an even longer paragraph, best to stop this ill-disguised edit war by keeping things brief and not dragging in quotes from pundits. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.213.5.106 (talk) 08:01, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

I found the former paragraph mangled into a single sentence at the end of a different paragraph, where it didn't belong. The main Mozilla paragraph should begin with Eich's arrival and end with his departure, as it does now. The separate paragraph on subsequent reactions to his departure should have WP:balance, or alternatively reduce to the most WP:notable commentator. The prior version quoted only Andrew Sullivan, as if he were the first and last word on the topic. If the article is going to quote Sullivan, it should quote more WP:notable sources, e.g. Signorile and The Daily Beast (i.e. the online brand of Newsweek).TVC 15 (talk) 10:45, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Two negative opinions as last word after Sullivan's is hardly WP:balance. Worse, Chu's words advance the falsehood that marriages would be annuled by Proposition 8 ([6]).

Massive conflict of interest in the sourcing

Coindesk is owned by the Digital Currency Group, which is heavily invested in Basic Attention Token, which is the main cryptocurrency used in Brave software monitization. Since Brandon Eich is the founder of these, it should certainly be removed. Dr-Bracket (talk) 05:26, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

• @Jtbobwaysf: and @Џ:, can I get your opinions on this since you guys are discussing a merge the on Basic Attention Token and Brave (web browser) Dr-Bracket (talk) 16:45, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

There's a TechCrunch version of the CoinDesk article. Џ 19:56, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

There seems to be a consensus that it is ok to remove cyrptorag sources. I think we are all erroring the side of caution these days, as these crypto articles are rife with promotionalism and COI. There was an RfC on Talk:Bitcoin_Cash/Archive_3#RfC_to_tighten_sourcing_on_this_article on restricting industry-rag sourcing, and I think it came back unanimous, and over time this restriction has flowed onto the balance of the articles (maybe in a manner that is admittedly unevenly enforced). Jtbobwaysf (talk) 20:12, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Wow, the whole of Proposition 8 controversy has been (almost) white washed away.

"Some employees of ...", "Some of the activists ...", "Others ... spoke out in favor". - Welcome to Fox News Corp.

Thank you, wikipedia :\.

I think that (besides the invention of javascript) this is kind of a defining moment of Brendan Eich's life. We need a section of its own.

Siggimund (talk) 07:04, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

I would also like to see this claim that it was activists from Mozilla sourced properly - David Gerard (talk) 18:03, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Bias

Having 'opposition to same-sex marriage' in the known for section is hugely biased considering it's far far overshadowed by being the creator of the JavaScript. I don't think i've ever seen another article with a personal view listed there. 173.177.183.115 (talk) 15:17, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Per the multiple international reliable sources it's cited to, which list it literally in the headline of the cited pieces, it really does appear to be the thing Eich is actually famous for in the wider world - David Gerard (talk) 20:10, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Similarly, it's not at all clear that Brave is something that Eich is famous for; if anything, it's the other way around: Brave's press coverage is mostly from it being Eich's next project - David Gerard (talk) 20:18, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

I think this is one of the situations where the truth is something that can be hugely biasing. Given that this is an article about a living person, I think it would be great to get this checked over and see what Wikipedia's established policies are here. ☃ Unicodesnowman (talk) 05:25, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

WP:BLP, which requires controversial claims to be verifiably cited to reliable sources. The claim is multiply cited to such sources, and the controversy appears to be that someone doesn't like this - David Gerard (talk) 08:44, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

I attempted to add 'Firefox' and 'Brave Browser' to the 'known for' section and remove the 'opposition to same sex marriage' bit, as there's just no way Eich is more known for opposing gay marriage than his browsers that they haven't even bothered to mention. Alas, the biased mods at Wikipedia changed it back. Apparently opposing gay marriage is more important than inventing an immensely popular web browser, let alone two. Wikipedia's bias is showing badly here, regardless of how they might attempt to defend this decision. (Anon)

useless reverts by user:David Gerard

Twice, edits highlighting a positive contribution to society by a living person have been deleted by what looks like a parked admin with a mission Helminthe (talk) 20:39, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

You should probably address the substance (above section) if your issue is one of substance - David Gerard (talk) 21:02, 27 January 2020 (UTC)