Talk:General Motors streetcar conspiracy/Archive 6

Non neutral

Springee attempted to remove the non-neutral tag. There is no improvement in the tone of the article. It continues to suffer from the years of overt ownership of Anmccaff. Undoing any of this non-neutral content has proven impossible vs his overwhelming forcefulness. His obnoxious might does not make it right. Trackinfo (talk) 04:03, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

OK, I didn't realize this was still an active issue. Thanks for adding the talk page comment. Springee (talk) 04:07, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

• This page has over 50 sections and is tl;dr. Can someone please succinctly explain why there is a neutrality tag on this article? It is not normal for such a tag to be on an article for two years. Coretheapple (talk) 15:42, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

• I would second this. I have respect for all the parties involved (and have been involved myself). However, I've also been out of the loop long enough on this article to no longer recall what the issues were. Could we restart the process and try to sort things out a bit? Two years is a long time for a neutrality tag. Springee (talk) 04:15, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

• Here is where the article was before Anmccaff got involved. I assume the subsequent edit that originally added the POV tag was him as an IP. In the subsequent 1,000 or so edits, most of the content in this article was reversed, previous sources removed and discounted (called discredited or debunked by Anmccaff). His POV has taken over the article. Any efforts to correct or add sources that do not agree with his POV have been rebuffed. It is an overwhelming task to try to begin the rewrite, made impossible when each step is reverted, with a lengthy, disjointed diatribe associated with each attempt. Here is but one example of my own attempt to start. Squashed from the word go. WP:OWN. Previous editors, including myself, have given up the effort. A few subsequent editors have cleaned up Anmccaff's poor editing style technically and have made minor revisions to his phrasing, but the essence of the content comes exclusively from the forceful opinion of Anmccaff. The lawyer like intimacy of his knowledge of this subject and his work to whitewash the record of the convicted conspirators, strongly suggests to me a WP:COI situation, but of course I couldn't prove it. It is an ironic twist that the POV tag was added at the beginning of his devolvement of the previous version of the article. Now that the article totally reflects his POV, the tag is quite deserved. Trackinfo (talk) 05:08, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Certainly, as I read the article as it stands in October 2018, you get the impression that America lives in a parallel universe where all the usual definitions of monopolies, cartels, economic viability, public transport policies, etc., that apply elsewhere in the world, do not apply. Since that cannot be the case, non-neutrality must be at work. The archive version that Trackinfo links to, although much shorter than the current version, is far superior in its content and in the ordering of that content. 92.26.119.116 (talk) 16:29, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Schramm excerpts.

The web piece on Detroit appears to be a fairly faithful excerpting of published work; should it really be called "self published", or should it be seen as a convenience site for a less-available print source? Anmccaff (talk) 17:58, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy is not a "self-published source"

Don't confuse a convenience cite with the material referenced. Anmccaff (talk) 18:20, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Sourcing

Book-length sources listed in "Further reading" not used in body of article

• Bottles, Scott L (1987). Los Angeles and the Automobile. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-05795-3.
• Black, Edwin (2006). "10". Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives. St. Martins Press.
• Goddard, Stephen B. (1994). Getting There: The Epic Struggle between Road and Rail in the American Century. Basic Books.
• Hanson, S. and Giuliano, G. editors (2004). The Geography of Urban Transportation, Third Edition. The Guilford Press. ISBN 1-59385-055-7. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Fellmeth Robert (1973). Politics of land: Ralph Nader's study group report on land use in California. Grossman Publishers. pp. 410–414, 488. ISBN 0-670-56326-9.
• Hilton, George W; Due, John F (1960). The Electric Interurban Railways in America. Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-4014-3.
• Kunstler, James Howard (1994). The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape. Free Press. ISBN 0-671-88825-0.
• Lewis, John E. The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies. Constable & Robinson Ltd. pp. 152–62.
• Norton, Peter D. (2008). Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-14100-0.
• Thompson, Gregory Lee (1993). The Passenger Train in the Motor Age: California's Rail and Bus Industries, 1910–1941. Ohio State University Press, Columbus, OH. ISBN 0-8142-0609-3.

Journal articles listed in "Further reading" not used in body of article

• Adler, Sy (1991). The Transformation of the Pacific Electric Railway: Bradford Snell, Roger Rabbit, and the Politics of Transportation in Los Angeles. Vol. 27. Urban Affairs Quarterly.
• Fischel, W.A (2004). An Economic History of Zoning and a Cure for its Exclusionary Effects. Vol. 41. pp. 317–40. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)

Individuals identified as topic experts in the lead not used in body of article

1. Scott Bottles
2. Sy Adler
3. Jonathan Richmond

Top-cited source

Meanwhile, the most frequently cited source in this article is a non-peer-reviewed, self-published PDF from a former academic currently a licensed cosmetician and sole proprietress of La Bellissima Expert Lash & Brow in Portland, Oregon:

Bianco, Martha (1998). "Kennedy, 60 Minutes, and Roger Rabbit: Understanding Conspiracy-Theory Explanations of The Decline of Urban Mass Transit" (pdf). pp. 98–110. Retrieved 2008-09-23. {{cite web}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Statements attributed:

1. "By 1930 most streetcar systems were aging and losing money. Service to the public was suffering; the Great Depression compounded this. Yellow Coach tried to persuade transit companies to replace streetcars with buses, but could not convince the power companies that owned the streetcar operations to motorize."
2. "GM decided to form a new subsidiary—United Cities Motor Transport (UCMT)—to finance the conversion of streetcar systems to buses in small cities. The new subsidiary made investments in small transit systems, in Kalamazoo and Saginaw, Michigan and in Springfield, Ohio where they were successful in conversion to buses."
3. "...was reorganized "for the purpose of taking over the controlling interest in certain operating companies engaged in city bus transportation and overland bus transportation" with loans from the suppliers and manufacturers."
4. "In 1939 Roy Fitzgerald, president of NCL, approached Yellow Coach Manufacturing, requesting additional financing for expansion..."
5. "...and the 1940s, raised funds for expansion from Firestone Tire, Federal Engineering, a subsidiary of Standard Oil of California (now Chevron Corporation), Phillips Petroleum (now part of ConocoPhillips), GM, Mack Trucks (now a subsidiary of Volvo)."
6. "Adding to the confusion, Snell had already joined the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly as a staff member."
7. "The 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, vectors the folktale about the decline of the Pacific Electric."

52.56.109.198 (talk) 18:41, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

erm.....so? Ms. Bianco made a career change; how would that invalidate her past work? Despite your frequent labeling of her work as "self-published" it was clearly written ex officio. Anmccaff (talk) 18:55, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

• IP editor (HughD?), it would be best if you would create an account or use your existing account before making such extensive edits to the article. Springee (talk) 14:10, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Self-published websites used as sources for statements in Wikipedia voice

Despite the generous availability of reliable secondary and tertiary sources, as yet unused in this article, this article relies on self-published websites of transportation and history enthusiasts:

1. http://www.coachbuilt.com/
2. http://www.historyisaweapon.com/
3. http://www.detroittransithistory.info/
4. https://www.yumpu.com/
5. http://utahrails.net/
6. http://marthabianco.com/
7. http://www.1134.org/

52.56.111.224 (talk) 16:59, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Strack is -the- historian for certain aspects of Utah rail, and is reliably published.

Bianco is also reliably published; her own site is used for the reader's convenience.

Detroit transit is, as mentioned before, a convenience cite for published work.

The Yumpu piece is usable to document a particular view, I suppose, but it'd be nicer if it had an author and an original source.

Coachbuilt has been found reliable for its own work on several occasions, and is only being used as a convenience cite.

1134 speaks for itself.

Historyisaweapon is also being used as a convenience cite.

Convenience links are an accepted practice for access to material otherwise difficult for readers and researchers to get to. Anmccaff (talk) 18:22, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

1134 looks like BS because it has a bunch of cheesy graphics, talks about tattoos, and 1134 is hell upside down. But the website creator (Stan) links to a "Letter to the editor" discussing the General Motors streetcar conspiracy which he allegedly published in the LA Times Nov 24 1999. Stan has plain text webpage on his site containing the letter. I tried searching for Stan's letter online, but was unable to find anything (though I might have missed it). Rather than linking to Stan's personal website, it would be better to link LA times section where Stan's letter was published. Ellenzakreski (talk) 03:10, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Non neutral

{{Tone|talk=Non neutral|date=January 2017}} IP Guy, would you care to give an example or three? Anmccaff (talk) 18:29, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Recent revert without discussion.

Monopoly31121993, A "summary" should not change the meaning of the article, or misrepresent the sources. BRD...I haven't seen you addressing your desired changes here on talk, have I? Anmccaff (talk) 14:02, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

The introduction should only re-state what is already in the article. It is not he right place for listing every city in the U.S. with or without streetcars. It needs to be cut down and summarize the main points of the article.Monopoly31121993 (talk) 15:24, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

It hardly lists "every city in the US with or without streetcars, does it? In fact, it mentions only the relatively small number which kept 'em up intil the present.

Yes, it needs to summarize the main points of the article, so removing some of those summaries, as you've done twice now, is a bad thing. The article covers a broad sweep of topics, some factual, some largely imaginary, and corralling them into a compact lead is not a simple matter of eliminating mention of some of them. Anmccaff (talk) 15:31, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Sacramento

The image of streetcars and autos cavorting together in Sacto's shipping lanes aside, is Sacramento the best example of legitimate streetcar revival, and does the article need one? Anmccaff (talk) 17:15, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

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Lacking and dubious sources

This article uses a number of sources that can not be considered serious. The following list contains examples, starting from the chapter "Role in decline of the streetcars". The number refers to the number of the footnote in the article, comments are added in non-cursive text.

• 63: "See elsewhere in this article for cited sources for all of these claims, notably in the 'other factors' section." - But where?
• 64: See the comment on Bianco above.
• 49: "Slater, Cliff (1997). "General Motors and the Demise of Streetcars" (PDF). Transportation Quarterly. pp. 45–66. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-04-25." - from the linked file: "Cliff Slater is a businessman with an interest in the economic history of U.S. public transportation. ". According to this website, Slater is an anti-light-rail-activist.
• 66 - This website, which seems to be the comment of a member of the public without any credentials in a relevant field.
• 68 - This comment article on a news website, written by a journalist without any aparent expertise on the field.

Thats hardly meeting the criteria from Wikipedia:Verifiability. I suggest to completely cut the chapter and to replace it with the following two chapters. I don't see why three seperate chapters with counterarguments are needed. -- Liberaler Humanist (talk) 00:09, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Most of the sources I'm not really sure about. The Slater article seems RS to me. I'm not sure why we would assume Honolulutraffic.com is a RS for the reliability of Slater. On the other hand, Slater's article was published in a subject relevant journal [[1]]. I agree that we don't know much about Guy Span. I would at least give the CBSNew Money Watch some weight until we have reason not to. This is one of those topics where we have limited sources so the sort of RSs we might normally want are harder to come by. That said, I agree that things needs some help here and thanks for taking a look. Which chapters are you referring to? If you are referring to the section "Role in decline of the streetcars" I think it should be kept since the big controversy part of the topic is how much GM did or did not cause the decline of streetcars. Springee (talk) 00:41, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Looking at the hnolulutraffic site in more detail I don't think we can conclude Slater is an anti-light-rail-activist vs just someone against a particular light rail project. I suspect we might find a number of people who are for light rail and public transit programs who are say against the California high speed rail project based on the economics of the situation. Either way, it doesn't make them unqualified (or qualified) to speak on the subject. Springee (talk) 01:53, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Recent addition of Zearfoss ref.

I think this needs discussion here, for three reasons.

First, a proceedural one. Adding a reference, especially one intended to make a different point, is never minor, even if it is short.

Hilton also responded to Zearfoss’s cavils, IMS, and Hilton is a far stronger authority. If you add one, you should add both.

Finally, where does Zearfoss go against the point Slater is cited for here, as opposed to the general effect of transit decline? Qwirkle (talk) 18:47, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Begging the Question.

General Motors used methods besides working directly through National City Lines (NCL) to perform bus conversions. For example, in March of 1938, NCL president E. Roy Fizgerald and four NCL employees met with Lexington KY entrepreneur Norman Smith at Smith's cottage on Herrington Lake, southwest of Lexington. Smith and his brother Leroy operated various transportation businesses around Lexington, and bought control of that city's transit system. Likely not coincidentally, the bus conversion in Lexington was performed later that year.

References

This is only relevant if one assumes that Fitzgerald, who had been in the bus business before GM had, could only have been there as a pawn, which is nonsense. It also is being given undue prominence in the lead, and seems to be original research, not something already chewed over in scholarship. Finally, given Fitzgerald’s usual business model, how is it remarkable? Qwirkle (talk) 14:18, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Here by the way, is the first hit off a Duck-duck search for “Herrington Lake GM conspiracy”. Pure conspiraloon stuff. The second is Alex Constantine. ‘Nuff said. The third is... surprise, surprise. The third is our local sockpuppeteer, Louis Guilbault. Qwirkle (talk) 22:58, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

General Motors is not mentioned in removed photo.

Yeah, that kinda sums up certain objections to the photo. @Lexlex (talk · contribs), could you explain why you feel something almost completely disconnected with any of the subjects of the article should be prominently depicted in the lead? Qwirkle (talk) 13:06, 1 July 2019 (UTC)