Talk:Gordon Klingenschmitt

Neutrality concerns

The references for this section are from the Mr. Klingenschmitt's organization and appear to not be neutral, such as "The Navy Secretary himself repented and rescinded the bad prayer policy 1730.7C." The phrasing might not comply with WP:IMPARTIAL. Trilotat (talk) 21:10, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

The above factually incorrect allegation is disproved by the one reference 12 (to point 6) that I examined, a word-for-word transcription of the US Senate official Record (see https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2006/09/19/senate-section/article/S9714-2). I dispute the objectivity of the above false-accuser and ask for a removal of the "disputed" label on reference 12 to the Congressional Record.Olorin3k (talk) 15:45, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

That in no way addresses the point and the referred language should be changed. Furthermore, you have no grounds to attack another user. Crimson Binome (talk) 19:15, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

The complainer that references from Klingenschmitt's organization are not neutral, apparently simply because they are from his organization, is itself groundless and based purely on assumption of intent, not content. The content of the reference I described is directly from the Congressional Record (which we will assume is neutral--yes?). Moreover, baseless assumption of non-neutrality on the part of others is an indication of non-neutrality on the part of the baseless judgementalist. These considerations all address the point of prominently labeling an article as disputed vis-à-vis neutrality. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Olorin3k (talk • contribs) 19:54, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

That's not how Wikipedia works, original research is simply not allowed at all because even though 95% of users might be responsible with it there will always be a remaining percentage who will abuse the system to their benefit and use an ostensibly neutral site in order to push their own agenda or market their own products/services/etc. Its similar to the reasons the UCMJ doesn't want people campaigning in uniform for literally anything. No matter how well intentioned a person wanting to change the rules so they can appear in uniform might be, changing those rules have the potential to open a Pandora's Box of people trying to subsume the authority of the military to push for absolutely horrendous things. I've seen it happen in other nations more than once. -- Alyas Grey : talk 10:07, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Even if we accept them as valid (and I cannot find them anywhere but Klingenschmitt's website, making their providence dubious), those are WP:PRIMARY sources. They can't be used to cite controversial claims or exceptional claims, especially accusations against a living person (in this case Klingenschmitt's commanding officer.) Furthermore, they don't support the most important points - I cannot find any reliable sources supporting the "if you pray in Jesus' name, you can be punished." quote at all, not even as an accusation (let alone as a fact, which you're trying to portray it as here); and that is central to the entire section. Beyond that, if there's no secondary coverage then the section is obviously overwhelmingly WP:UNDUE. The material in this section is, as far as I can tell, already covered more accurately and with better sources further down, where it says During his time as a Navy chaplain, Klingenschmitt was "a vocal critic of the Navy's policies on prayer in ceremonial settings"[14] engaging in "a long-running battle with the military over regulations requiring chaplains to deliver inclusive prayers at military events other than religious services."[15] Klingenschmitt "accused his superiors of pressuring chaplains to offer generic, nonsectarian prayers" and as a result "gained wide attention and sympathy among religious conservatives."[14] - those are the actual legal battles; this massive section seems to focus on one set of spin related to those legal battles that Klingenschmitt has pushed on his website and youtube channel. But since no reliable sources have covered it, we can't really reflect it here. --Aquillion (talk) 19:43, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Edit warring

@Muboshgu and @Truthnotlies -- you both need to work together to maintain the standards of this online encyclopaedia while adding content based on reliable sources and avoiding POV text and OR. If you cannot come to an agreement then open a new discussion and point out specifically what text is disputed and why, and other editors can help bring this to a conclusion. Quis separabit? 00:05, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

@[email protected]: I did not engage I edit warring by one rollback of a bad edit. I'll address this further later. – Muboshgu (talk) 00:41, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Muboshgu continues to delete and revert only, without discussion, then accuse me of vandalism for restoring the summarized documents I had posted last summer, which are Navy or Congressional documents, easily verifiable, and should remain. TruthNotLies — Preceding undated comment added 03:49, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

RfC regarding court martial section

RFC: Should the Court-martial and later vindication by Congress section remain? The section is poorly written and sourced almost exclusively from the subject's own website. It has already been added/removed repeatedly. Retswerb (talk) 08:26, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

The section could be remedied by rewording in narrative form and replacing poorly sourced statements. The last portion appears to have adequate citations and useful history. Ihaveadreamagain 18:46, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

I did some editing but it definitely needs some better citations which perhaps you or someone can find in an article. It does have information that is not in the rest of the article but the court martial portion is confusing and needs fleshing out. Ihaveadreamagain 19:17, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

I see no usable citations. Court records and legal filings cannot be cited for controversial statements under any circumstances, since they require legal expertise to read and interpret, and in any case everything came from the subject's youtube channel or was hosted on his personal website, making them dubious - I 100% do not believe his website can be trusted to host accurate documents, and sources turn up no other copies, which suggests they may in fact be inauthentic. More importantly, we do have reliable secondary sources, which are already used to cite a more accurate and concise summary of events in the paragraph following the section; this renders the section obsolete - even if we were to accept the alleged documents from Klingenschmitt's website as authentic, it would still be unacceptable to try and use WP:OR from those documents to dispute or re-characterize the conclusions of reliable sources. Note that some of this is even a WP:BLP issue, in that we are making serious accusations against Klingenschmitt's supervisor (whose identity can easily be determined) with no valid sources. --Aquillion (talk) 19:55, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Since creation of this RfC an anonymous user has twice added unencyclopedic content ("Why doesn't he provide the entire training session and let context define the incident that he so conveniently twists?" etc) to the section. I'm still fairly new here, don't want to turn this into an edit war but there are definitely axes being ground here. Retswerb (talk) 09:30, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Delete. The section relies too heavily on original research from primary sources, and quick search suggests coverage is very limited. If sources can be found, a single sentence, at most, in the career or political and social views sections might be justified, but this massive section is absurdly WP:UNDUE, and with the current sources I would not support even that sentence. The legal battles seem to be more accurately covered in the next section already: During his time as a Navy chaplain, Klingenschmitt was "a vocal critic of the Navy's policies on prayer in ceremonial settings"[14] engaging in "a long-running battle with the military over regulations requiring chaplains to deliver inclusive prayers at military events other than religious services."[15] Klingenschmitt "accused his superiors of pressuring chaplains to offer generic, nonsectarian prayers" and as a result "gained wide attention and sympathy among religious conservatives."[14] That appears to be how this was covered by reliable sources and makes the section redundant. --Aquillion (talk) 19:31, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

I think you are right. I had a hard time understanding the section even when I tried to make it better. Ihaveadreamagain 21:29, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

The sequence of events and reason the controversy is relevant, is better explained by the 8 verifiable sources, not by snippets that don't tell the whole story. For example, why did he protest? Because he was told to stop praying in Jesus' name. What was the policy he violated? Navy policy is sourced. What did the judge say? Navy judge order is listed and summarized. How did the public respond? Letters from Congressmen are provided. How did Congress overturn the policy? (Biased people delete this ever happened.) Did the Navy reverse the same policy? (Biased people delete this ever happened.). If you remove these documents, you twist the story to say "here's a guy who was punished for no reason." Don't delete the context. Add another section if you must, but don't delete the sequence and neutral Navy and Congressional sources, only to provide your own incomplete and biased sources. TruthNotLies 00:58, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

MDY vs DMY dates

I understand that Klingenschmitt has a military career, but he became notable as a state legislator. There does not seem to be anything so noteworthy about his military career, despite that section's now length, other than some of the same stuff that made his career as a state legislator a bit more interesting than the typical state legislator. In a case such as this (two examples off the top of my head include Tammy Duckworth, Amy McGrath), clearly MDY format should be used. I'll also note that this article was in MDY format from the time I created it in 2014 until this May, when it was changed to DMY. Long-standing status quos are maintained here in cases like these. – Muboshgu (talk) 18:57, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Klingenschmitt first became notable for his actions while in the military. The Daily Press and Washington Post were writing dedicated articles about him 9.5 years before his political career. Prior to his pursuit of political office, Klingenschmitt's actions in the military were additionally written about by Stars and Stripes, U.S. News & World Report, People for the American Way, Christianity Today, WRBL, Church & State, The Virginian-Pilot, The Wilson Quarterly, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Legal Times, Political Theology, and Human Events (and continuted to be written about as recently as 2016). He became notable in both the colloquial and Wikipedian senses long before his political ambitions. Secondly, 96.88 percent of the coverage of Klingenschmitt's political campaigns and career have been by local sources, while those about his military activities were of wider interest. Thirdly, the military-related content is well over 58.8 percent of the article's prose, while the religious content is 9.95 percent, and the political content is 26.3 percent; as the article is predominantly about Klingenschmitt and his military history, DMY dates are therefore indicated by MOS:DATETIES and WP:MILMOS.

Furthermore, while the previous infobox implementation listed Klingenschmitt's modules in chronological order, they also didn't subordinate military and religious information under the officeholder heading. Since his single term in office happened most-recently of those three (is is the shortest-in-chronological-length of his three modules), why then do the others fall under its banner? — Fourthords | =Λ= | 20:02, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

As I said before, his notability stems from his one term in the Colorado House, not his military career. He did not get a page before his election to notable office and I can't say if he would have passed AfD solely on content published before that. I will grant you that the military career part is much longer now than the political career, since you've expanded it. Is your reading of MOS:DATETIES suggesting that we should change the pages of politicians with military service to DMY? This would include Duckworth, McGrath, Beau Biden, John McCain, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and a ton more who are presented in MDY. – Muboshgu (talk) 20:52, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

[H]is notability stems from his one term in the Colorado House, not his military career. Klingenschmitt was notable, both by colloquial and Wikipedia standards, before his political ambitions; I'm sorry if you missed where I explained how the sixteen cited sources (plenty more of which exist, but were redundant to citing this article), all of which predate Klingenschmitt's first political campaign, show that. I will grant you that the military career part is much longer now than the political career, since you've expanded it. Your allowance is appreciated. Is your reading of MOS:DATETIES suggesting that we should change the pages of politicians with military service to DMY? I couldn't say. I haven't read nor edited those articles. I'm discussing the article at Gordon Klingenschmitt, the clear majority of which is concerned with his military service, as supported by 19 sources from 2005–2016. — Fourthords | =Λ= | 21:21, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Indeed you expanded this article considerably back in May. I see the WaPo, Daily Press, and Stars and Stripes seem to be good sources. The Christianity Today piece titled "Military Culture War" or US News's "Washington Whispers", they are offline and it cannot be said how much detail they cover him with. Other sources added appear to be primary government documents. This article wasn't created when he was a Navy chaplain getting reprimanded. – Muboshgu (talk) 00:33, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

This article wasn't created when he was a Navy chaplain getting reprimanded. That's a non-sequitur. Nonetheless, Klingenschmitt was first dually notable for his military troubles, they easily represent the majority of the prose, and he continues to parlay those credentials to this day. IAW MOS:DATETIES & WP:MILMOS, the DMY formatting is called for. — Fourthords | =Λ= | 13:23, 9 December 2023 (UTC)