Talk:Kyndra Rotunda

I reverted portions of this addition.

Contributor characterized Theodore Olson as a commentator "on the Right" and Alan Dershowitz as a commentator "on the Left".

First we don't usually put characterizations of individuals as being on the left or right in article space. Second, where-ever Dershowitz may stand on most issues, he took an early stand following 9-11 advocating "torture warrants" (his words). I suggest if we were to characterize individuals, his advocacy of torture puts him clearly on the right when it comes to Guantanamo policy. I am not familiar with the other commentators picked by the book's publicists, but I challenge whether the two examples the contributor picked constitute a "diverse cadre".

I am not sure whether comments picked by the book's publicists merit inclusion of the article at all.

I fixed a bunch of ill-formed references too. Geo Swan (talk) 08:49, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

This article has had a lot of poorly explained edits.

This edit removed several paragraphs that I think were well referenced, and written from a neutral point of view. They were removed with absolutely no explanation.

Similarly, this edit also removed several valid paragraphs, without explanation.

I restored that material. Geo Swan (talk) 20:30, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

• Single purpose contributors continue to make unexplained edits to this article. Geo Swan (talk) 01:30, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

As a courtesy to other contributors could we please discuss controversial issues on the talk page, not in our edit summaries?

There are no edits here on the talk page, other than those I have left.

This article has a lot of edits by several wiki-ids created for the sole purpose of editing this article. , , .

This edit, currently, the last edit to the article, says, "before modifying the prior edit, please see ticket:2010093010005573". I think User:NuclearWarfare is warning other contributors not to restore the frequently blanked section on Rotunda's sexual harrassment suit.

If NuclearWarfare is one of the very limited number of contributors who can read OTRS tickets then NuclearWarfare is an administrator, and I request clarification as to whether they were warning potential reverters they would risk administrative action if they reverted this material.

I see no obvious indication that this excised material was not compliant with our policies. No one has initiated a discussion here on the talk page, stating a concern that the material did not comply with our policies.

I am going to remind NuclearWarfare that a reference to the text of an OTRS ticket is no help whatsoever to those of us who can't read it. Geo Swan (talk) 03:50, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry I was not clear, but I really cannot be—OTRS' privacy policy prevents me from doing so. I personally did not handle the ticket actually; I just came across it after it was closed. I shall ask the person who did handle the email response might be able to say more, and I shall privately alert them of this discussion. NW (Talk) 01:52, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

• I have a vague recollection someone may have sent me something further about this OTRS. But this is where those comments should have been recorded, or at least a link provided. What links here isn't helping me.

  It seems to me that individuals who are the subject of articles here should be required to have good reasons to request blanking through OTRS.

  An OTRS ticket implies Ms Rotunda personally contacted the OTRS team about the section of the article that covered her sexual harrassment suit. I remind the members of the OTRS team that it was Ms Rotunda herself who initiated the sexual harrassment suit. If it were the other way around, if someone else were to have initiated a sexual harrassment suit against Rotunda, one that was dismissed because it was baseless, then I could understand her requesting blanking because she was a target of someone else's suit.

  But she wasn't the target of the lawsuit, she was the initiator. After spending a couple of hours reading all kinds of documents about the lawsuit I am sure Ms Rotunda and her husband felt she would win the lawsuit. I am sure she did genuinely feel harrassed. I am sure she felt humiliated, publicly humiliated, by the way her case was dismissed.

  There are circumstances where some contributors argue for selectively removing properly referenced, neutrally written material from articles, to protect individuals from undue humiliation. When the humiliation was due to an action they took, not an accident, an action they took in the field where they were an expert, then I really think sanitizing their article is a mistake.

  I think my description of her lawsuit was neutral. Other good faith contributors who disagree should try to explain themselves, not revert material without explanation. Geo Swan (talk) 02:23, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

• Additional references include:

More information date, reference ...

date	reference
2009-10-05	Ex-Clinic Director Kyndra Rotunda Sues George Mason for Sexual Harassment
2009-10-05	Ex-Professor Sues George Mason Law School for Harassment
2009-10-19	George Mason School of Law Sued for Sexual Harassment
2010-04-27	Trial Looms in Hard-Fought Law Prof Sexual Harassment Case at GMU
2010-04-28	GMU law professor faces harassment suit
2010-04-28	GMU professor seeks dismissal of woman’s suit
2010-05-18	Sex Harassment and the Truth
2010-05-24	George Mason, Law Dean Win Bench Dismissal of Rotunda Sex-Harass Suit
2010-05-24	Covington Secures Victory for George Mason University in Sexual Harassment Case
2010-05-25	(Dismissed) Lawsuit of the Day: Rotunda v. Zengerle
2010-05-25	Judge Dismisses Most of Sex Harassment Case Against George Mason Law
2010-05-25	Rotunda lawsuit dismissed, almost
2010-05-26	GMU prevails in sexual harassment case
2010-05-26	GMU sex harassment suit dismissed
2010-06-08	Rotunda Sex-Harass Suit Against George Mason Legal Clinic Exec Is Settled
2010-06-08	Update: Rotunda v. Zengerle Has Settled
2010-06-09	Settlement Reached in Suit against George Mason Law Prof
2010-06-10	George Mason Reportedly Settles Rotunda Harassment Lawsuit With No Payment of Damages

Close

--— Preceding unsigned comment added by Geo Swan (talk • contribs) 14:49, 26 September 2011

I noticed the following:

01:06, 26 September 2011: Reverted.

01:30-14:49, 26 September 2011: Asked question about whether to revert on talk page

15:09, 26 September 2011: Asked question about whether to revert at Village pump

Because of the controversial nature of the material and the article being a BLP, I am undoing your revert while the issue is discussed and consensus is sought. I am not implying that the material does or does not belong in the article, just that you should wait a few days after asking whether to revert before reverting. If nobody objects, go ahead and revert or let me know and I will undo my re-revert (waiting a year is too long, IMO). --Guy Macon (talk) 20:01, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I responded to this concern, at the time it was made, in a reply to a comment about this concern on the Village Pump. The explanation is simple. The reversion that preceded the request for input was over a separate issue than the issue where I thought wider input was desirable. Geo Swan (talk) 21:30, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

I restored information from the one independent comment I have come across of Ms Rotunda's book. As I noted above, all the other comments supplied by the individual or individual behind the single purpose accounts trying to turn the article into a hagiography were misleadingly from the publisher's web page devoted to the book -- that is they are not independent from the subject.

Another contributor reverted, with the edit summary "Reverted without prejudice - see talk page"

I think this good faith reversion is based on a misconception. Yes, I did raise questions on the talk page and village pump about the removal of the section on her sexual harrassment suit. The restoration of the link and quote from Michelle Shephard is an issue I regard as settled. Way back in 2008 I wrote "I am not sure whether comments picked by the book's publicists merit inclusion of the article at all." The vandals who keep removing information from the one independent comment of the book have had almost three years to explain their repeated excision, and have not done so.

I dispute that I was under any obligation to wait for a resolution of whatever issue lay at the heart of Ms Rotunda's OTRS ticket prior to reverting the vandalism behind the excision of Michelle Shephard's comment. Geo Swan (talk) 22:02, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

The issue of whether comments on book covers count as Reliable_sources was brought up here. Short answer, they don't. Geo Swan (talk) 11:03, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

"Reverted without prejudice - see talk page" refers to the last few paragraphs of the section of this talk page directly above this one. There is further discussion here: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28miscellaneous%29#Is_a_year_too_long_to_wait_for_an_explanation.3F

EDIT: And Here: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/User_talk:Guy_Macon

--Guy Macon (talk) 14:11, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

I've added back the newspaper review, and one by a constitutional law specialist (in a peer-reviewed publication). IMHO more full-length reviews should be welcome. The book-jacket blurbs are weakly usable, as primary-sourced to the publisher (are they independently verifiable?), but should not override actual independent full length, verifiable reviews. Discuss? --Lexein (talk) 23:29, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

• I've looked for full-length reviews, from RS, so far no luck. I don't think the publisher supplied blurbs can be confirmed. If they are to remain I think they have to be rewritten so they don't look like they are from proper reviews. There was a discussion on WP:RSN, which I should have linked to here, when I found it. Geo Swan (talk) 16:53, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

• The review from Louis Fisher is good. I put it at the top. I remain concerned over the placement of the brief endorsements her publisher dug up. Publisher supplied endorsements are of questionable reliability. Publishers are known for getting other authors in their stable to trade glowing endorsements of one another's work. So I moved it to the end of the review section.

  I replaced "Rotunda's book has received favorable reactions from recognized legal experts." with "Rotunda's publishers found favorable reactions from recognized legal experts." I think this more accurately reflects how much independence we should credit to Olson's and Dershowitz's endorsements. Michelle Shephard is not a "legal expert". But she is unquestionably an expert on Guantanamo. Geo Swan (talk) 20:43, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Expert she might be, but I don't think Michelle Shephard is sufficiently unbiased on Guantanamo that her opinion on Rotunda's book carries any more weight than Olson or Dershowitz. I'm not the only one who thinks so. The phrase "found favorable reactions" suggests that they had to do a lot of searching for those reactions, and ignored others. While some of that is obviously true, I've never heard of any publisher using blurbs picked from a random drawing.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 22:08, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

One other big reason that line doesn't work is that it asks too much of the subject. For example, Michelle Shephard's book comes from a much larger publisher (John Wiley & Sons). She's much more widely known, and so she gets big name reviews, although it should be noted that her supporters also tend to come from one direction.

Kyndra Rotunda is a lawyer and a law professor, not a reporter. Her book was published by Carolina Academic Press (not even a WP article for them). That alone shows not to expect a wide variety of reviews. All their books seem to be about law. You're asking way too much of her.

But Rotunda did get more than just the two reviews mentioned in the article. The other names are also all lawyers, and some are law professors. The only one with a WP article is Edwin Meese, although James L. Swanson should have one, as he wrote a NYT bestseller.

Plus, Shephard's review comes in the same article as she raves over Worthington's book. Considering that he's joined at the hip to Begg, this bad review should be viewed as a very good thing for Rotunda.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 01:55, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

• I don't have the links handy, but the issue of whether publisher supplied blurbs should be regarded as compliant with WP:RS has been discussed at WP:RSN, and possibly elsewhere. If Meese, Swanson, Dershowitz published comments about Rotunda's book, then, by all means, we can cite, quote or summarize those comments. But it is routine for publishers to request short positive statements as a favor, and I agree that we shouldn't trust publishers' promotional material. We don't really know Meese, Swanson or Dershowitz wrote what the publisher claimed they wrote.

• I think some of the challenges to using Michelle Shephard's comment on Rotunda's book can be paraphrased as "Shephard, as the author of a rival book on Guantanamo, is biased. As a rival her comments lapse from WP:NPOV." My understanding of NPOV is that what we contributors write has to be neutrally written, but NPOV does not prevent us from citing, quoting or summarizing from WP:RS which may contain bias. Hardly any WP:RS are written by authors who try to use a neutral voice. So we attribute the possibly biased positions in RS to their authors. Shephard's comments were attributed to Shephard. If we respect the intelligence of our readers we can let them reach their own conclusion as to how concerned they should be over possible bias in Shephard's comment.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 21:49, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

This article has had several single purpose wiki-ids make edits that do not comply with policies like WP:NPOV.

On September 30 2010 User:Florencewhite made several biased edits, including sanitizing the section on the sexual harrassment suit Ms Rotunda initiated. Those edits triggered the concerns of a previously uninvolved quality control volunteer, who reverted the first bunch of edits as "unconstructive". User:Florencewhite then blanked the section on the sexual harrassment lawsuit. In three further edits they blanked the section on the sexual harrassment lawsuit three time -- in eleven minutes.

Tne hours later an OTRS team member warned contributors not to work on the sexual harrassment section.

Note, "Florencewhite" violated WP:3R.

Note, "Florencewhite" didn't object to the article having a section on the sexual harrassment lawsuit -- he or she merely objected to it having a different wording than their preferred version.

It seems whoever was using the "Florencewhite" wiki-id also sent an email to OTRS. I am concerned as I don't think good faith contributors should skip trying to engage in civil collegial discussion and skip right to complaining to OTRS.

I really hope that whoever processed that OTRS ticket took steps to confirm that "Florencewhite" was an individual with real life standing in the sexual harrassment lawsuit.

I think whoever processed that OTRS ticket made numerous serious mistakes. In particular, I think the decision to support User:Florencewhite should only have been made after examining the history of unexplained and counter-policy sanitization of this article. I am very sorry to say I think the OTRS team members should have been conscious that their decision gave the appearance that they sided with User:Florencewhite.

Good faith contributors who think the lawsuit should be covered have still not been given any indication from the OTRS team how to do so without violating whatever policy they think their ruling is based on. Geo Swan (talk) 17:38, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

• Comment Forward motion should be pursued here. I'm in favor of neutral RS coverage of news, public trials and public lawsuits. Wikipedia is not censored, or is it subject to chilling effects or threats, or is it whitewashed of true, public information. If the judge did not order the records sealed, or expunged, nor order a gag rule, (he did not), then Rotunda has no foundation upon which exclude publicly available information. It cannot be construed to be false or defamatory (the two legitimate grounds for BLP claim exclusion). OTRS can be queried as to the veracity of the OTRS claim, and any associated notices placed in Talk anywhere. User:Keegan is an upstanding, honest OTRS volunteer, who will give a fair assessment. --Lexein (talk) 19:31, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

• Relevant talk is here. Keegan (talk) 05:06, 11 October 2011 (UTC)