Talk:Lena Dunham/Archives/2016/December

Dishonesty about being registered democrat during the 2016 primary

There is good evidence that she was not eligible to vote in the 2016 demcratic primary, despite claiming to. http://heatst.com/culture-wars/has-lena-dunham-committed-voter-fraud-or-lied-about-voting-for-hillary-clinton/

94.103.175.86 (talk) 02:35, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Heat Street again? They really likes to publish gossip about her, don't they? Regardless, the site isn't a reliable source and accusations/insinuations of criminal activity need something more substantial than this. Grayfell (talk) 04:06, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

White men and BLP

The white men story has been reported widely and should not be removed citing our BLP policy. I have added 2 different refs confirming the story and could add another 5. ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs 10:04, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

"Sexism" Controversy section

Since she specifically singles out white/European-descended men, shouldn't this also be qualified as being racist, alongside sexist? Although maybe genocidal would more accurately describe her intentions... Thoughts? 73.20.33.105 (talk) 16:02, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

See WP:NOR. What do reliable independent sources say? Currently neither of the references, which appear quite partisan, even support the claim that there was "considerable criticism" or a "sexism controversy". We are not going to guess her intentions were racist or genocidal. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 16:25, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Agree with Zzuuzz about WP:NOR. Furthermore, the sources are partisan and appear to be opinion pieces. I'm not convinced that this Twitter video merits mention at all, per WP:UNDUE. Has there been any coverage in reliable independent sources? Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 19:09, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

If HeatStreet and The Libertarian Republic are the best examples of sources, this is a waste of time. Wikipedia requires reliable sources for controversial statements, not partisan WP:gossip. Grayfell (talk) 20:15, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

and reliable sources are all leftist/feminists sources right? not biased at all. SWF88 (talk) 22:16, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

If you want, go ahead and dismiss any source you don't like as leftist/feminist, but that doesn't actually make it unreliable. Heat Street is an opinion site, not a news source. The Libertarian Republic is a new, still obscure site run by a former Libertarian presidential candidate who was also involved with FreedomWorks, which has the word "Libertarian" in its title, and which features "the writing of prominent libertarians, conservatives, independents and sometimes democrats" but somehow claims, in the same paragraph, to be non-partisan. I find that hilarious, so thanks for prompting me to look into that little nugget of absurdity. Regardless, the story is a gossipy blurb of no substance, describing no actual backlash or outside commentary or criticism, and judging by the language used, "(the double standard in the media is blatant and intentionally oblivious to bigotry towards white men)", is also an opinion piece. You got anything better? Grayfell (talk) 23:11, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Actually yes. I came across numerous articles from AP, the guardian, and even Vox are used as reliable sources, even when written as a opinion piece. but of course, they're written promoting the same political spectrum(left) and therefore considered a reliable source. hypocrisy at its finest. SWF88 (talk) 00:24, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

Opinions must be attributed, and must be weight carefully based on BLP and WP:DUE. In other words, opinions must be held to a higher standard, especially for biographies of living people. These opinion pieces utterly fail that test for multiple reasons, of which ideology is only tangentially a factor. If you know of somewhere that opinions are being similarly misused, regardless of politics, fix it or start a discussion on that article's talk page. Do you have anything better for this article? This page is for improvements to this article, not gripes about Wikipedia's bias. Are you saying the AP has a liberal bias? For real? Heat Street and The Libertarian Republic do not have the reputation for accuracy and fact checking required by WP:RS. If they did, and if they were anything more than WP:FARTs, maybe they could be used as attributed opinions, but that's a lot of ifs. Grayfell (talk) 00:50, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

I meant to say HuffPost, not AP. and yes, a lot of liberal sites and opinion pieces are used as sources. SWF88 (talk) 01:32, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes, and conservative opinions are used as sources as well, but they still need to be weighed carefully based on BLP and WP:DUE, especially for BLPs. Grayfell (talk) 02:44, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

@Grayfell: and @SWF88: regarding special:diff/748010166 I don't know the reliability of thelibertarianrepublic.com's interpretation but if we confirm a Twitter account belongs to a BLP subject then Twitter is most certainly an acceptable and reliable source of quoting things said by the person. In this case the article references https://twitter.com/lenadunham/status/793929098926166016 which only says "It's not the end of men, it's the evolution of men into better men. (beautiful animation by Sophie Koko Gate!)". We can certainly cite that tweet to support her saying that sentence, but any additional interpretation would need more sources. She doesn't literally say "the extinction of white men" in her Tweet. Technically the entire 29 second video is a female voice (said to be Lena) asking a question and a male voice (said to be her father) answering it, so his answer can't be attributed as being her answer. The tweet itself could be summarizing his view point rather than necessarily summarizing her own.

If we are to state any interpretations of that tweet it should probably come from a more notable source than The Libertarian Republic. Ideally multiple sources to give a balanced viewpoint, considering the controversial nature. It is entirely okay, if notability is supported by reliable sources, so cite the tweet as a primary source next to the quote from the Tweet so people can easily affirm it. Ranze (talk) 09:11, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes, my edit summary there was too simple. SPS can sometimes be used as a source in situations like this, but first we need reliable, independent sources to establish significance. WP:BLPPRIMARY suggests that even when supported by secondary sources, caution is called for. Merely mentioning this tweet at all is granting it significance, and we don't get to pretend that's not a value-judgement just because we can slap a primary source after it. I'm sure there are thousands of tweets from Dunham, and probably even more blog posts responding to those tweets. Some of those might be from superficially more reliable outlets, like The Libertarian Republic, but we need to hold this to a higher standard. If a reliable, neutral source establishes this as encyclopedic significant, by indicating it's affected her career or had some other enduring impact, we can go from there, otherwise it seems premature to speculate. Grayfell (talk) 22:17, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

What is wrong with thisreference? All it does is accurately cite the video -in which Dunham congratulates her father's racist and sexist ideas with "That's my dad!"-, offer factual information about the number of likes and retweets, then adds that some users have criticized the message and gives links to the replies. There is no way this article could be partisan, because it only reports facts. Is this article going to be ignored only because it's on Breitbart? 5.12.189.243 (talk) 14:04, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

Funny how this is being ignored now that the page is "protected against vandalism". --5.12.189.243 (talk) 21:55, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

It's being ignored because it's only mentioned by unreliable sources, which has already been explained. Also because it's a WP:FART. It's gossip by way of partisan outrage culture. If you can't find a more reliable source it doesn't belong, and if you do find a more reliable source, that source would have to establish how this is encyclopedically relevant. Grayfell (talk) 22:06, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Bottom line is, this woman publicly called for the extermination of white men and you don't think it's relevant to her biography. Yet her saying she wouldn't get married until same-sex marriage is legalized somehow is. Also, you're dismissing a news site as "unreliable" because it opposes the mainstream media, whose lies Breitbart repeatedly brought to light. Somehow you don't think Huffpo is partisan, even though they're transparently partisan - against Trump, as a mere example. Wikipedia is simply taking sides while claiming to be encyclopedic. 86.121.165.63 (talk) 12:21, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

You're literally wasting your time arguing about Breitbart here, and your words here will literally change nothing. Breitbart cannot be used as a source on Wikipedia, and that decision is not made here, but on the reliable sources noticeboard WP:RSN. Marteau (talk) 12:30, 8 December 2016 (UTC)