Talk:Mark Whitacre/Archive 2

May 29, 2007

Thanks for the suggestions. Most of the images were removed and the article was shortened significantly. Feel free to help improve the article because multiple editors improve this process. Any comments or suggestions for the Solomon Bayley article would also be appreciated. I discussed this on your talk page for 65.96.190.159.ReadQT 02:56, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

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May 27, 2007

The good article standards suggest relevant images, not visual fluff. None of the images contained in this article are directly relevant, they're simply related by incidental association. For instance, showing a Cayman Islands flag just because Whitacre used banks in that jurisdiction is irrelevant to an article about Whitaker. All of the images can and should be excised. The chief reason this article is so odd to me is that it appears to be a virtual island in the Wikipedia universe. At a glance, it looks like maybe two people ever really contributed to it in the past half year, one of whom only edits this single article. The misuse of the horizontal rule is particularly jarring; it's as if the main contributors are indicating they never looked at featured articles to see that nobody surrounds sections with them in the same fashion. I continue to have misgivings about the length, scope, merit, formatting, and, by extension, neutrality. 65.96.190.159 19:33, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

reorganizing ADM and price-fixing material

The Archer Daniels Midland article contains three paragraphs about the price-fixing scandal; the entire lysine price-fixing conspiracy article consists of four short paragraphs and is half the length of the "ADM Price-Fixing Case" section in this article. Some of this material really belongs in the ADM or lysine articles. I will work on moving some of that material over as I get time.

I'm also concerned about the tone of this article -- some of it reads more like a college newspaper than an encyclopedia (e.g. "stunning turn of events") and there's a lot of subtle NPOV. I'll work on cleaning that up too. Tim Pierce 17:26, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

NPOV?

After scanning this entry, I was curious and went to Whitacre's own site (www.markwhitacre.com) and the PR announcement for his new job in 2007 (http://www.genengnews.com/news/bnitem.aspx?name=18934291). Much of the language in this entry seems to mirror the language at those sites. It seems like it's either a case of unacknowledged citation (aka plagiarism) or of someone with a vested interest in this case doing much of the writing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Blewenstein (talk • contribs) 05:46, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia cited as the source

The acknowledged citation is Wikipedia in the website, http://www.markwhitacre.com/career.html ; Wikipedia is credited at the end of the paragraph from a May 3 version.67.98.185.179 02:50, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 07:17, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

DELETE AND RE-WRITE: Mark Whitacre does not warrant a full biography of his life in Wikipedia

All the stuff about his education, being scammed by Nigerians, blowing leaves in his driveway at 3 in the morning....90% of this article needs to be completely deleted.

1. Mark Whitacre acted as an informant for the FBI in a price fixing investigation of his employer ADM.
2. Mark Whitacre was found guilty of embezzling money from ADM, and was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison
3. Some people, including the FBI agents he worked with, deemed the sentencing too harsh in light of his participation with the price fixing investigation
4. Mark Whitacre currently is president of a biotech firm in California.

Now, I realize that I probably have some details wrong in the above because I wrote it off the cuff as a "for example." But my point is that the article is absurdly long, and could be rewritten in two or three sections tops (maybe less depending on if we deem to spend any length on the movie or books relating to the case, which I personally think only deserve a one or two sentence metion, if any all.) Whitacre does not deserve the kind of length we see here. I submit that this article be completely deleted an rewritten. Anyone with me on this? I will need some help.Eskimo79 (talk) 16:29, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Response to Eskimo79 re rewrite

I have followed this article for quite some time, especially since they started shooting the movie about Whitacre's life. It looks to me like the editors of this article have thousands of edits each on many other Wikipedia articles covering many different subjects and people. Eskimo79, by contrast, looks like a complete newcomer and now wants to assert that Whitacre's bio is not important or relevant enough to deserve such a substantial bio entry.

From the references included in the bio, the FBI has stated that Whitacre is the highest-level executive to turn whistleblower in the history of American business. Plus a Matt Damon/Steven Soderbergh movie is now about to come out. Thus, my vote is to leave the article as is. People who are the subjects of big-budget feature-length movies deserve, in my opinion, detailed wiki bio entries because so many people want factual, unbiased, and well-referenced information about that person. To me this bio is well-referenced and highly informative precisely because it is so detailed and well-referenced.

The first paragraph gives a good but superficial overview consistent with what eskimo79 wants as the entire article. Howerver, the table of contents points the reader who may want further detail to locations in the long bio that are of interest to them. Therefore, I vote in favor of leaving the bio as is. Daisykc (talk) 22:01, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree with User: Daisykc to maintain it as is

I agree with User: Daisykc. Several years of work has went into this article ever since it was announced 3 to 4 years ago that a movie was being made about Whitacre. Dozens of references have been researched and uncovered and linked with this article including many recent references which interviewed the FBI about Whitacre. Furthermore, a few of the major editors who have worked on this article have over 5,000 edits each under their belts editing and researching thousands of individual articles. User:Twp, who is a very active editor living in Boston, has also placed a lot of his time editing this article a few months ago and did an excellent job with reorganizing it. Eskimo79 appears to have started editing Wikipedia less than 2 weeks ago. With less than two weeks experience and less than 10 edits under Eskimo79's belt, how can he or she simply decide that a subject of an article does not warrant or deserve a detailed wiki biography? I have never seen it before in all of my years of editing on Wikipedia where an editor, especially a brand new one, states that a subject of an article does not deserve to have a detailed biography, and simply suggests that everything be deleted and to rewrite a short summary to replace it.

Several years has went into researching this article as one can observe from the numerous & excellent references attached to almost every sentence in it. With the upcoming Steven Soderberg motion picture about Whitacre, many readers enjoy and appreciate all of the details and references included in this article. The 32 references alone give many details of the story behind it. But you have to have some text in order to attach the references to. I agree with User: Diasykc that the first paragraph is the summary that Eskimo79 prefers to have as the entire article based on his/her comments, and then readers can dig further into some details, only if they want to, by using the "Table of Contents" located immediately after the first paragraph. When several years of research, writing and editing has went into an article such as this one, why simply throw it all away? It is one of the best referenced biographies. ReadQT (talk) 03:28, 8 August 2008 (UTC)