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Peter Roskam was a good article, but it was removed from the list as it no longer met the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. If you can improve it, please do; it may then be renominated. Review: March 15, 2007.

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Template:Activepol

To-do list for Peter Roskam: edit · history · watch · refresh · Updated 2007-05-20 Here are some tasks awaiting attention: Cleanup : Inconsistent citation style. Fix dead links in citations. --Dual Freq 16:02, 18 March 2007 (UTC) Priority 1 (top)

Archives
Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4 Archive 5

A suggestion regarding article structure

• It seems somewhat awkward to place Section 3 (Congressional service) before sections 5 and 6 (1998 Congressional campaign and 2006 Congressional campaign). Section 3 occurs last (chronologically) so it might make sense to make it the last section. Patiwat 19:33, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Archive

I have archived the contents prior to 10 March 2007 of this talk page to Talk:Peter Roskam/Archive5. If you wish to recommence a discussion prior to 10 March 2007, visit the appropriate archive and cut and paste the entire conversation over to this page.

I have also placed the archive links in an infobox to the right.

Kind regards,
anthonycfc 06:18, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

GA class?

A few problems yet, despite recent GA rating. 6(c). any non-free images have a fair use rationale. Image:Roskam-Cheney.jpg has no fair-use rationale and is likely to be replaceable fair use. References are also inconsistent in their style, there are many citation templates like {{cite web}} and {{cite book}} that can help. I would say a bare minimum would be <ref>Author. . Accessed ], ].</ref> There are also a few paragraphs in Personal history and elsewhere that don't end with some kind of citation making the reader wonder if they are cited as well. --Dual Freq 14:28, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Also, 5 sources have the word "blog" in them, they might want to be verified as reliable sources per WP:BLP#Reliable sources. --Dual Freq 14:35, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I also question the "critical commentary" fair use rationale for Image:Salvi Roskam Maher.png. There is no critical commentary about the advertisement in this article. --Dual Freq 14:55, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you that the Image:Roskam-Cheney.jpg may no longer be appropriate for inclusion in the article; however, I think a strong case can be made for retaining Image:Salvi Roskam Maher.png. The image itself is subject to criticism that is included in the article, with reliable sources cited.

Roskam supports tort reform. The Chicago Tribune noted that Roskam earned over $615,000 in 2005 as a personal injury trial lawyer. Terrence Lavin, the former president of the Illinois Bar Association, said that Al Salvi and Roskam promised, "We will never, ever vote for tort reform", when they asked Lavin for a $25,000 donation to a political action committee. Roskam has been accused by political opponents of soliciting frivilous lawsuits via his Yellow Pages ads.

I hope we can all be in agreement on this issue. Thank you. Propol 15:47, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

That still doesn't seem to be commentary of the advertisement. Although I haven't looked at the rationale's used on Apple Inc. advertising that page looks like a good example of commentary on the advertisements and would require a fair use illustration of the advertisement. This article only needs to explain the conflict of a lawyer who supports tort reform and link to a reliable source. It doesn't need an image lifted from a blog to make this point. --Dual Freq 16:49, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Dual Freq. I think Propol misunderstands what is meant by "criticism". It does not mean to use an image to criticize someone or something else (like, in this case Roskam), but it is referring to criticism of the image itself, which isn't what this is being used for. Also, let's say that I create an ad for myself, then buy space in some publication, then some blog scans it and publishes it online, don't I retain copyright to the ad? Not the blog, not the publication, but the author. --rogerd 19:35, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I understand "criticism" perfectly well. What Dual Freq and rogerd both seem to miss is that the image itself (Image:Salvi Roskam Maher.png) is a subject of the criticism, not just Peter Roskam. The image originally appeared as an advertisement in the Yellow Pages, the Chicago Tribune then under the fair use doctrine copied the image. It appeared in the print edition of the Tribune - I have seen it. rogerd seems overly concerned that the source cited is a blog -- it's not. It's an article that appeared in the Chicago Tribune, which was subject to fact-checking and editorial review. The hyperlink to the Tribune includes the term blog only because readers can post a response to the article. The original article is a reliable source (whereas I would not consider a reader's response that did not appear in the print edition of Chicago Tribune to be a reliable source). Going back to the fair use issue, if the Chicago Tribune's editorial staff and legal department were comfortable with the image qualifying as fair use, then I think that ought to satisfy our concerns. Dual Freq or rogerd do you think your opinion of fair use is more authoritative than the attorneys' for the Chicago Tribune? Propol 21:16, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, our standard for fair use is more restrictive than the Trib's (or most other paper's) is. --rogerd 21:36, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I have reviewed WP:FU multiple times. Really the only additional requirement is that there be no freely available comparable image. In this case, there is no free alternative. (If you find one, I welcome it.) The inclusion of the image is appropriate. Propol 21:49, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

The Trib doesn't need to worry about international mirror sites, and the article referenced is a blog, it says right on the top of it: Eric Zorn, Change of Subject, A Chicago Tribune Web log. I'm also still not seeing where in this article the ad is being critiqued. --Dual Freq 23:28, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, how is the ad itself criticized? I don't see it either. I don't see that it adds anything to the article. --rogerd 18:20, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I also agree with the removal of GA, this article needs a bunch of work, citations are not consistent, just looking at the tort reform paragraph shown above. I understand that the point of the author and the blog is to show that Roskam is misleading on his support of the tort reform issue, but this article was vague on dates. It begins saying he supports tort reform, but provides no evidence or examples then it references an incident from the mid-1990s and offers no date leaving the reader to assume it is a recent quote. Even the biased source blog / opinion piece tells that information. I suspect this article is full of similar problems. This article seems long on criticism, and short on biography. Perhaps Barack Obama's article, could serve as a template for this one, with its balance of criticism and biographical detail. However, it's tough to find much criticism in that article, or mention of contributors. No words beginning with "contrib" or "donat" there. At least it doesn't have the extensive blow by blow contributor list like Jerry Weller has. --Dual Freq 23:28, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Removed biased content

I've made clear edit summaries and thoughtfully removed content that was either biased, deceptive or repetitive. Several times sources were not properly represented or only the side of political opposition was given. --Dual Freq 21:12, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm willing to clarify the edits if the edit summaries were not clear enough, but wholesale reversion, especially considering I added a few cited items, is not acceptable. --Dual Freq 21:40, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I support your changes per your reasoning. --rogerd 18:20, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

External links

I think its safe to remove the campaign video links since they are old as well as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee attack page, no added value and no additional information is provided by it. The Congresspedia link also seems to have no additional value as it appears to be a dupe of this article and the vote smart, Wa Post and open-secrets links cover the links provided by Congresspedia. --Dual Freq 16:37, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Agreed --rogerd 18:20, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Dead links

I was trying to update refs and standardize them, but there are many dead links and other unverifiable ones. Any idea how to handle those? --Dual Freq 20:22, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Illinois State Representative 40th district

I haven't had much luck finding election details, but I did find that in November 1992 Roskam defeated Democrat Pat Cullerton, brother of Illinois state senator John Cullerton, and in 1996 he defeated Democrat Kevin Schuele (29.2% to 70.8%). I can't find much for 1994 perhaps he ran unopposed. I wanted to add this to the electoral history, but I have no percentages to use for 1992. Anyone have any additional details for 1994 or numbers for 1992? --Dual Freq 23:39, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Chicago Sun Times, November 5, 1992. DISTRICT 40 (100%). Peter Roskam (R) 26609 61% Pat Cullerton (D) 17355 39% --Dual Freq 23:50, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

November 8, 1994 edition, the Sun Times issued no endorsement for the 40th district while listing most other districts in Illinois, so I assume this means it was unopposed. Any problem with adding these totals? --Dual Freq 00:13, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Contributors section.

I have replaced this entirely proper section. If you think there needs to be some sort of balance, go add a list of notable contributors to the similar Democratic politician's pages! --BenBurch 12:27, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Landfill

I don't think the landfill bit belongs in an encyclopedia, biographical article. Doing a LexisNexis search, the only article that comes up for the full text terms Roskam and Molen or the terms Roskam and landfill, relating to this topic, is the Daily Harald article cited, "Roskam challenged on environment Duckworth says challenger is pro-'green'", Eric Krol, Daily Herald Political Writer. The link between Roskam and the landfill seems tenuous at best and seems only to have been used as a typical campaign year smear taking advantage of a 2006 lawsuit. There is no significant national news on this under General news and only this one story under Midwest news sources or Illinois news sources. Since Roskam is not responsible for his contributers alleged actions any more than Duckworth was responsible for her contributors actions. I propose removing this and placing lawsuit details, excluding Roskam since his is not responsible for the landfill, in the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County which makes no mention of the landfill, Mallard lake or the lawsuit. --Dual Freq 15:51, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Make it so.  ;-) --BenBurch 17:36, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I've created a section Forest Preserve District of DuPage County#Mallard Lake County Forest Preserve for the lake and forest preserve / landfill information. I've also removed the Roskam bit from it as noted above. --Dual Freq 19:01, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Biography

In an effort to find some more biographical material for the article, I was thinking of including a small paragraph about father / mother siblings, etc. I consider that to be basics of a biography. What I have so far is Father, Verlyn R. "Swede" Roskam, (age 77 in Oct 2006, originally from Fort Dodge, Iowa), Vice-President (Agriculture division) Oil Dri Corporation of America and mother Martha (Jacobsen?), former school teacher / EAL / retired, unknown age. Father graduated Knox College, Illinois in 1951 (ROTC, 10 months in Korea), mother graduated Knox in 1952. Roskam claims to be "brother of 5 doctors". Potential sources include, 1988 award for parents, Roskams contributors P-T lists Mother, father, probable brother Stephen and a Phyllis and Dick Roskam (unknown relation), The Ogden Reporter 2007 - Interesting story about father, perhaps a start of a stub on him. What I'm still looking for is where mother is originally from, just to note it and siblings names or at least how many, brothers / sisters. Possibly a bit more about his wife, not too much just the basics. Any ideas, sources etc? --Dual Freq 23:10, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Education stance

In the 1990s, Roskam supported three different state legislative plans to remove books that some parents found objectionable from public schools: one to remove the textbook series Impressions that contained texts that were said to have themes of the occult, violence, witchcraft and disrespect for parental authority from Arlington Heights schools, another to remove any book that "expressly counsels for suicide," and a third to allow local juries to determine whether a book is obscene. This is section is typical of the hack and slash job of this “so called bio” on wikipedia.

I will take this step by step in this section which is typical of the whole article, and show the truth of this statment.

Lets start with the statement (sentence #1) “In The 1990s, Roskam supported three different state legislative plans to remove book that some parents found objectionable from public school….”

First big problem… 1990’s ??? when??? 1990, 1991… 1999??? When???? No citation of this basic question of “WHEN”?

Second big problem … “…Roskam Supported three different state legislative plans…”

What plans??? When were they presented... What were they??? Any citation …NO…. Any details…NO … NO NOTHING but hersay.

Third big problem…”…to remove the textbook series ..”Impressions” What was in this book series and what was in them. Were can I look at one and read one ??? Nothing, NATTA. We are to infer from blue sky and partisan blogger Eric Zorn and trust him to do the readers crital reading and thinking of this textbook series? . We are to take Joshua Green’s statements at face value (assuming I COULD even READ Joshua Green’s article which is not available for review).

And finely, the forth big problem is the citation … (14) ^ Would you, could you twist a fact? By Eric Zorn Friday, October 20, 2006 Chicago Tribune blog. (15) ^ "A National Knife Fight" by Joshua Green, Oct 2006 Esquire, pg. 236

These two citation are more notable for what is left out… as well as the “Esquire” article, which is not even available online.

This is complete joke, considering we are to infer Roskam’s full and current education position from this sparse and completely misleading, and very old as well as small event in Roskam’s long career as a public office holder. This entry is misleading and full of holes and should be removed and not considered in this bio as A “Roskam’s complete stance on education”

No wonder why Wikipeida is a joke. I could go on with down the line but you get the drift.

Stop removing valid points for discussion —The preceding unsigned68.75.59.189 01:59, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

PS... KILLING THE Messenger and censoring the truth will not stop it. This only shows the weakness of those editors, whose fear of truth is so strong as to feel their need to hide in the shadow of lies and censorship. 68.75.59.189 01:59, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Educational Positions Part II

In looking at the rules and policy of wikpedia, in particular, the policy regarding WP:NPOV, WP:VERIFY and WP:BLP this section is complete and clear violation of the policy and principles, out lined in these publish online docs.

Propol is clearly in the wrong with pushing this section about Roskams positions on Education. This section is clearly flawed, citations bais and flawed bloggers, and has the tone of a "attack-ad campaign quasi-journalism in an "encyclopedia" article. This section is clearly biased and interpretational and inconsistent with the way an "encyclopedic" article should be written.

• I'm not going to involve myself in this dispute other than to point out a couple of things:
  • If Eric Zorn is a real reporter at that newspaper, then his blog entry on the newspaper's blog may be citeable as a reliable source. It's not ideal, but it probably falls within permitted sources if it meets the required criteria for blogs belonging to reliable sources.
  • The Esquire citation is valid. A live url to a free copy of the article is not required for a valid citation. There is enough publishing information in the cite to make it verifiable at a public library. In fact, anyone in the US with a valid library card can probably retrieve that article for free over the internet, through AccessMyLibrary.com . - Crockspot 13:06, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
    • I just did a quick google news archive search, and I do not get a hit on that Esquire article, but google isn't perfect, and that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Perhaps someone with a LexisNexis account can get a copy to verify that it is being characterized properly. Carry on. - Crockspot 13:32, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

The Eric Zorn is cited out of context; in fact, the blog article chides Tammy Duckworth of making this antidotal blurb about this very minor event, an issue taken completely out of context and making this molehill in to synthesized campaign issue. In all fairness, is incident is not notable enough to be worthy of its own subheading. By giving this its own, subheading, it violates Wiki policy WP:UNDUE. This section is again, misleading, salacious and not sufficiently cited and the implication that this news and accurate summary of Roskam’s’ complete view on education is ludicrous.

This again, to remove this is per WP:NPOV, WP:VERIFY and WP:BLP. And lastly, Blogs belonging to even "REAL" reporters are considered "Editorial commentary" and not subject to full peer/editorial review, and are not considered an "unbiased" views of subjects for which they write about. Also, The Eric Zron blog would fall under WP:SELFPUB as well. This alone, under published wiki policy WP:BLP, WP:VERIFY, WP:SELFPUB as well as WP:NPOV justifies removing it.

What you say could be valid, if the subject was about beer or football, but it does not cut it as to regards to so controversially and presumptuous entry, considering this article is a biography of a living person, which standards of reliability of information is much higher.

And finally this...

===Remove unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material===

Editors should remove any contentious material about living persons that is unsourced, relies upon sources that do not meet standards specified in Misplaced Pages:Verifiability, or is a conjectural interpretation of a source (see Misplaced Pages:No original research). Where the material is derogatory and unsourced or poorly sourced, the three-revert rule does not apply. These principles apply to biographical material about living persons found anywhere in Misplaced Pages, including user and talk pages. Administrators may enforce the removal of such material with page protection and blocks, even if they have been editing the article themselves. Editors who re-insert the material may be warned and blocked. See the blocking policy and Misplaced Pages:Libel.

Administrators encountering biographies that are unsourced and controversial in tone, where there is no NPOV version to revert to, should delete the article without discussion (see Misplaced Pages:Criteria for speedy deletion criterion G10 for more details).

Jimmy Wales has said it is sometimes better to have nothing at all than to include speculation, and has emphasized the need for sensitivity:

I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons.

It can't be any more clear. Your points are with out merit.68.75.187.60 14:38, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

• I'm assuming you're replying to me here, if I'm wrong, ignore me. Honestly, I haven't even looked at the sources, and I was just pointing out that some blog entries by reporters on newspaper blogs are allowable, and that a URL is not a requirement for a valid citation. So my points are not without merit. They are Misplaced Pages policy. Obviously, your other concerns would override, particularly WP:BLP, which I am very familiar with being a BLP patroller, and WP:UNDUE. Any source could be challenged and excluded on those grounds. But I thought I saw an editor arguing for their exclusion simply because one was a blog, and the other had no URL. I just wanted to point out that on those grounds alone, the sources shouldn't be rejected automatically. I have to defend valid cites constantly that editors remove because there is no URL, or they have to pay for an article. It's sort of a pet peeve of mine. As I said, I don't want to involve myself in this dispute, so I'm outta here. - Crockspot 00:43, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Note to editors here: please do not restore comments made by banned users. If you wish to discuss points they bring up, go for it, discuss the issues, but do not encourage the trolling by restoring or replying to their attacks. Gamaliel (Orwellian Cyber hell master) 21:59, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I suggest that the editors here add information about Roskam's current positions on education. Gamaliel (Orwellian Cyber hell master) 17:32, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Endorsments

Goethean

The endorsement section should be about who endorsed the candidate, not why or why not. The why and why not breaks the NPOV point of view, or a more balanced explanation of the overall controversy needs to be included. I don't think it should be since 1)the election has past, 2) It would take up a lot of room in the bio on what is debatebly a minor point and 3) It can be characterized as a, "I didn't know the teacher changed the assignment" type of conclusion if you read the response from the Duckworth campaign spokesperson.

I could not link back to the Daily Herald article about Sen. Ray Soden choosing the candidate, but I assume it is accurate. If you include that, wouldn't it be just as important to quote from the other part of the Chicago Tribune article that says Roskam said, the national organization's endorsement was based on the recommendation of veterans in the congressional district who know his background, record and priorities.

There was also confusion in the process. Sal Capirchio, the director of the VFW's national political committee said, "The new process, he said, required candidates to request a questionnaire. Roskam got the 11th-hour endorsement after a recommendation from the state VFW chapter, Capirchio said."

Duckworth spokeswoman Christine Glunz said the campaign was never made aware of the new endorsement policy.

If you want to get into all of that controversy and explain it, fine, then balance it out to make it NPOV. but I believe that the endorsement section is just that and not much more.

I await your response

Bubbler2222 19:08, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

1. http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2006/06/candidates_refo.html
2. Cite error: The named reference Jimbo was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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