Talk:1978 California Proposition 6

External links

The wikipedia guideline on external links asks us to keep external links in articles to a minimum and only link pages that have information that isn't suitable for the article for some reason. User:Classicfilms added a fair number of external links which I don't think should be used as external links, so I've removed them from the article. I copied and pasted them here with my notes of how I think they may or may not be useful as references for this article.

BALLOT PROPOSITIONS June 1978-June 1998This is a listing of the names and numbers of ballot propositions. It certainly doesn't contain a large amount of information, but it could be useful if someone thinks we need a source to say which initiative this is. Personally, I think it makes more sense to use the California Voter Information Guide from 1978, which has much more information about the initiative, and, of course, all of the information available on this website.

Back to the Ramparts in California This is about the Milk film and similarities between 1978 and 2008: it doesn't contain any useful information about 1978.

Bush Miscalculates on Gay Republicans Because it's a 2000 editorial about George W. Bush. I actually don't think this would be useful even as a source. It includes a reference to Reagan and Brigg's, but I don't believe that editorials are reliable sources.

Taxes No, False Teeth Yes This is good in that it's a contemporary source, but it has only one paragraph about the Briggs Initiative. This may or may not be a useful source.

Also, for anyone interested in improving this article, the Save Our Children article is well referenced. In addition to the books cited there, "Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America" by Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney has some information on the topic. - Enuja (talk) 19:12, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

You raise some valuable points. Right now, the article contains only one source which means that the article, as it stands, is in violation of Wikipedia:Verifiability. Here is my response to your suggestions:

• BALLOT PROPOSITIONS June 1978-June 1998 - contains the date of the election which is missing from the article. If you can provide another source which also contains the date, that's fine. Otherwise, I would like to add this to the body article in order to verify the date.
• Back to the Ramparts in California - this contained an archival photograph related to Prop. 6 and provided a source to verify the demonstrations against it, which is useful information. I am not attached to this article if you can provide another source for this information, that's fine. Otherwise, there really isn't a good reason to remove it from the article as it does provide direct information about the topic.
• Bush Miscalculates on Gay Republicans - We have exactly one reference for Reagan's involvement in this issue. I am not attached to this particular article but I do feel that as his influence was critical to this history, we need more sources on the topic. I won't insist on this reference (although it does reflect what historians write about the subject) but I would ask that more references are provided on the topic.
• Taxes No, False Teeth Yes - There is no reason to remove this article. It is archival documentation of the event, not an op-ed, and provides a source for Tom Bradley's involvement. It should be added to the body of the article.

I would thus argue that three of the sources clearly satisfy Wikipedia:Verifiability - I feel that in this context the NYT article also does qualify but will not push it. Of course established scholarship is always valued in WP articles, but until a group of editors do the research, that won't happen at this moment. The Wikipedia contains numerous articles with sources such as these and as I said they all qualify as RS - they don't need to be EL's, but there really isn't a good reason not to include them or similar sources to an article which has virtually none. In other words, my goal is to wikify the article by making it verifiable. -Classicfilms (talk) 20:04, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

On verifiability: I wrote Save Our Children and Harvey Milk. Both articles include an extended discussion on the Briggs Initiative. My primary sources for the 1978 campaign were indeed Clendinen's Out For Good and Fred Fejes' Gay Rights and Moral Panic. The Mayor of Castro Street also includes quite a bit of info about John Briggs and Randy Shilts as they enjoyed a unique politician-reporter relationship, even after Briggs learned Shilts was gay. I don't usually have much comment about external links, but this article certainly deserves a thorough treatment. --Moni3 (talk) 20:23, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

This:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Milk#Briggs_Initiative

is a fantastic section - well documented and well written. As with the current article, I think that the date of the election should be added since we don't have a WP article on this election, but otherwise, your section reflects what I had in mind when I wrote the comments above. And, as I wrote, I am not particularly attached to any of the articles above - I was aiming towards verifiability.

Since the Briggs Initiative article is not WP compliant, I would recommend that we redirect to your section on the Harvey Milk page which is a better article or at least a sourced one. Perhaps some of the useful sections that lack sources can be moved to the Harvey Milk talk page. Subarticles should only be created when they have sources to back them up. -Classicfilms (talk) 20:33, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Everything in this article is verifiable, and most of it is already verified in the Briggs Initiative section of Harvey Milk and in the California subsection of Save Our Children. In other words, this article isn't finished, and it doesn't violate the verifiability policy (it can, and hopefully will, be verified). This isn't an emergency: if anyone specifically doubts any facts, we can delete those. But we should improve, not remove this article. Just recently I went through this article, deleting and re-framing anything that was inconsistent with the information I remember from Out for Good or Mayor of Castro Street. You (Classicfilms) deleted one fact. Is there anything else wrong in this article? Then let's fix it! By all means, use the language and sources in the other articles to improve this one, and once we've got this one into better shape, we can trim the subsections in the other articles. If you want to use one of the sources you put in the external links to cite a fact in this article, by all means please do so (although in many cases I think the books are better sources). Just don't put those sources in the external links section. Adding citations will improve this article, but adding external links does not improve this article. - Enuja (talk) 21:07, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Though I appreciate Classfilms' trust in the Milk article, there were broader issues in the Briggs campaign beyond what Milk addressed. It should certainly be in its own article. These books shouldn't be too difficult to find - any library would have them, or have access to get them. I know I have these materials, but I'm encouraging either of both of you to work on this one. --Moni3 (talk) 21:32, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

That's fine - redirecting is a decision that is up to continuous editors of this article. As for removing facts, I'm not certain what you are referring to but I did remove information that had fact requests next to them but no sources. In attempting to improve this article, I felt that information that appears in WP articles should have sources. If you have the sources, by all means restore the facts and add the sources. I added the EL's (not uncommon by the way) as a way to help at least give information on the topic but am not attached to the EL format. My goal really was to help the article and add sources. By means of compromise, I'll add the three I suggested above and leave out the NYT article - though the NYT article does support at least one of the facts that I removed should you change your mind and decide to use it. -Classicfilms (talk) 21:39, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Add the sources as in-line references for specific facts if you think they are appropriate sources for those specific facts, but please do not put them in an External Links section. - Enuja (talk) 21:46, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

This is not the only major initiative known as the "Briggs Initiative"

There is at least one other major initiative known as the "Briggs Initiative." Most notably, Prop. 7, 1978, dramatically expanded the scope of California's death penalty. It was intended to "give Californians the toughest death-penalty law in the country," by which its proponents meant the law "which threatens to inflict that penalty on the maximum number of defendants." California now has one of the most expensive, least efficient death penalty systems in the country, with 660+ inmates on death row, costing both the state and federal government millions and millions per year.

See: California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, REPORT AND RECOMMENDATIONS ON THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE DEATH PENALTY IN CALIFORNIA, http://www.ccfaj.org/documents/reports/dp/official/FINAL%20REPORT%20DEATH%20PENALTY.pdf

See also: Ellen Kreitzberg, A Review of Special Circumstances in California Death Case (for the Cal. Comm. on the Fair Admin. of Justice), http://www.ccfaj.org/documents/reports/dp/expert/Kreitzberg.pdf

I suggest a new page for this "other" Briggs Initiative with a disambiguation page to distinguish them. But I am a brand new user, and not yet sure how to proceed.

Awry (talk) 22:31, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a good suggestion: go ahead and make it so! California Proposition 7 (1978) is a redlink on John Briggs (politician), so I suggest that you just click on that link and make a new page under that name. It probably makes sense to put disambiguation language on the top of this article instead of making a whole disambiguation page, as both Briggs initiatives are named after the same person. While constructing the page, it would be ideal if you could find sources that focus on that proposition instead of just mentioning it, but from your two sources, it certainly looks like the proposition is notable enough to have its own wikipedia page. - Enuja (talk) 23:09, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

The voting results image is horrible for people with color blindness. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.92.162.243 (talk) 22:35, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Summary contains a false fact.

"Openly gay San Francisco native and politician Harvey Milk..."

Milk was a native of Woodmere, NY, as stated on the Harvey Milk page.

I would simply delete "native and", but I don't know how.Waynesb (talk) 05:26, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

 Done Well spotted, thanks!— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 14:19, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Citation 2 goes to a 404

The citation that goes to http://www.stockton.lib.ca.us/prophist.htm#NOV78 leads to a 404 error. 161.97.25.15 (talk) 22:04, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

LGBTQI ?

There were no LGBTQI activists in 1978. There were lesbian and gay activists. Why not use the language by which they described themselves? Sajita (talk) 00:52, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

@Sajita, I agree, and I made some changes. This should do it. Wow (talk) 02:50, 26 April 2023 (UTC)