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Physics Start‑class Low‑importance

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Bstoica said above: "Perhaps it would be better to state in a more elaborate manner at the beginning of the article that it's not dealing w/ mainstream physics. I don't think the one sentence that is currently there quite cuts it, and going into the company section one can be left with the idea that this is legitimate science."

I see two related issues here:
1. Does the introductory sections makes it sufficiently clear that BLP theories are generally rejected by mainstream physics?
2. Should the "Company" section be more explicit about the fact that Mills' theories are not accepted by the mainstream physics comunnity?

Issue 1: The second sentence of the two sentence introductory section is:
"Where Mills has not been ignored he has met general skepticism in the academic community since the founding of BLP in 1991. Mills' ideas of "CQM" and "hydrinos" have been criticised by mainstream physicists[5][6][7][8] as "pseudoscience" and rejected as "just silliness".

That seems clear to me. I am not sure how it could be made more explicit and remain consistent within the spirit of NPOV. Perhaps there is a case to be made for including Dr. Phillip Anderson's thoughts on the matter to liven up the section a bit.

Issue 2: There may be some issues with the clarity of the writing in the "Company" section but two of the four paragraphs provide substantial negative information with regard to BLP. The point of the two paragraphs is that BLP theories have been rejected by respected scientists and no practical devices have been built based on BLP technology. I think perhaps there is room for improvement here in that perhaps the section could more clearly make that point. However, overall I think the general tone and approach of the section is correct.
--Davefoc (talk) 05:58, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Bstoica is clearly asking that 1 out of every 5 sentences, if not more, should be written this way. All there needs to be is to have similar such sentences be repeated 10 times as much or so in a myriad of different ways. Bstoica won't be satisfied until the article Blacklight Power is water-downed in the same way as The Energy Machine of Joseph Newman was. Check out this guy's extensive edit history, spanning 39 hours and 47 minutes with a record-shattering two edits to Wikipedia article space. This guy is committed! (reality-check: I wouldn't even bet that he still bothers to check Wikipedia - much less this talk space! Don't expect him to remove the recently-added tags either!)siNkarma86—Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia
^{86 = 19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk} 02:50, 3 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, there seem to be two separate issues here. I agree that the "Company" section is probably okay as it is now, as it provides sufficient information on BLP. But the Issue 1 could perhaps be improved - it is most important that BLP is at odds with the known laws of physics, not that Mills' theories have been ridiculed. That is what the first sentences of the article should emphasize. Anyways, I am indeed going to stop trying to fix this article, as it's too big of a waste of time. And siNkarma86, until at least until the 3rd and 4th sections (Rowan University research and Mainstream...) are brushed up the two tags should stay. --- Bstoica (talk) 05:56, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

this article is such BS .. if he garnered 25M, it's only because investors are Idiots.. if there is any true Science, it's chemistry.. Randell Mills is trying to rewrite the laws of chemistry.. he's so full of cow-manure.. Wikipedia is a scam-promoter by posting anything relating to Randell Mills.. Wikipedia and Randell Mills are both Scammers Prime. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.48.156.21 (talk) 22:39, 9 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia does not allow original research. Feel free to find documented evidence of a scam. Doing so has legal implications and can be rewarding for the plaintiff. Regards, siNkarma86—Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia
^{86 = 19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk} 01:55, 10 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This article is good in that it shows how scammers can gain $ for idiotic and completely Wrong ideas.. But.. There needs to be clear demarcation about what is real and what is pseudoscience (fantasy-fiction).. This article is TOO NEUTRAL and needs to be clearer about the fringe-fantasy-idiocy aspects of the 'theory'/BS.. As the person says above, Wikipedia is complicit and encouraging FRAUD by publicizing this BS .. MAKE THIS ABSOLUTELY CLEAR or delete the article.. PARTICIPATE IN FRAUD or make ABSOLUTELY CLEAR IT'S FRAUD - only ONE OR THE OTHERPhoenix-antiscammer (talk) 23:02, 9 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Encyclopedias aren't tools which may promote or claim fraud, provided that the content is encyclopedic. It may describe such however, so as long as appopriate sources are used. Objectivity and depth of coverage should meet or exceed what is seen in the mainstream media. Regards, siNkarma86—Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia
^{86 = 19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk} 01:49, 10 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I added mention in the theory section to the 1995 edition of the GUTCQM where RLM first predicts acceleration of the expansion of the universe in 1995 which was before it was observed and then later confirmed in 1998. This is significant and verifiable from the references provided.

Additionally, I updated BLP's publication references to 84 peer-reviewed publications and provided an updated link to the publication list. The last peer-reviewed citation was from 2009.

Both of these edits were undone by WMC on the basis of "restore useful info". How is it possibly restoring useful info by removing factually significant, more accurate and updated information? This seems biased. I would like to argue for restoring my edits.

Johnnycpis (talk) 14:02, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The useful info you lost (purely by accident, I've no doubt) was some peer-reviewed, mostly in low-impact journals William M. Connolley (talk) 14:35, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Only significant papers should be listed, the significance being provided by mentions in secondary sources, review. Additionally, if you are talking about a dispute over a paper, you can add the paper along the secondary sources that document the dispute. Dumping every single paper written by the subject is not good Sorry, your edit didn't do this. When providing an analysis of every paper written by the subject, the analysis should be sourced to secondary sources (reviews of the field, etc), which explain the weight of those papers in the field. Some time ago, I added to this article that Mills had published, but only in "speculative physics" journals, and it was sourced to a secondary source that I found. I see that it is no longer in the article. We should recover that bit of info and its source. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:31, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, here it is:

"Although Mills has published CQM theory papers in peer-reviewed journals, he has published only in those dealing with speculative work."^[1]

1. Erico Guizzo (January 2009). "Loser: Hot or Not?". IEEE Spectrum. Why it's a loser: Most experts don't believe such lower states exist, and they say the experiments don't present convincing evidence. (part of Winners & Losers VI, by Philip E. Ross in the same publication)

--Enric Naval (talk) 15:45, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This paper could also be useful, but it's behind a paywall[1].

The rejection of Blacklight's patent also analyzes the publications and its impact, but it should be used only if we can't find any better review, and only because of falling back to WP:PARITY.

WP:PARITY being used because Mill has almost zero coverage in mainstream books about the field of physics. I think that the only one mentioning is The role of neutrinos, which describes the theory in painstaking details but makes no analysis of its weight. Park wrote about the initial reception of the theory, about how his theory compares to mainstream science, and about the significance of his analysis by NASA (he says that it's simply Pascal's wager) [2]. Popular Science wrote about the initial reception[3]. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:25, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

1) For the acceleration of the expansion edit: I am correct in understanding, then, that we need a secondary source which discusses this prediction before being able to include it here? Even if it is plainly obvious from the referenced primary source which made the claim? Does a secondary source need to discuss that this is significant for it to be included here?

2) William: saying Mills et. al. have published a number [35] of papers, some peer-reviewed, mostly in low-impact journals ... is misleading in that it sounds as if few of the papers published by BLP are peer reviewed--at least to me. Since the information is available, rather than use a subjective term, let's be factual and re-word this to something like: Mills et. al. have published a number of papers, 84 of which are peer-reviewed[35], mostly in low-impact journals ... or Mills et. al. have published 84 peer-reviewed papers[35], mostly in low-impact journals. Let's update the reference link too since I don't see the point in including an outdated publication list.

3) Enric: I don't see where you are going with the comments above; It doesn't seem unreasonable to mention in passing the volume of work published in peer-review along with some of the claims in those publications, which is what the --BLP reported experimental findings-- section is. I'm just further quantifying a statement that was already there. Are you suggesting removing this statement and/or changing it to something else (ie: you are not ok with my suggestion in (2))?Johnnycpis (talk) 17:15, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Paul Steinhardt predicted the accelerated expansion of the universe as a part of the quintessence hypothesis a couple of years before RLM. Bruno Zumino talked about it as early as 1978 in his work on modulii. Georges Lemaître talked about vacuum energy powering such an accelerating expansion way back in 1934. Many others have postulated the possibility of Hubble's expansion being of an accelerating rather than decelerating nature. You could even argue that Einstein made allowance for the possibility by including the cosmological constant into his field equations. RLM certainly was neither the first nor the last to think of this possibility. So this is all kinda moot. SteveBaker (talk) 21:14, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

@Johnnycpis, 1) yes, you need a source discussing the acceleration of the expansion discovery. As Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims in articles require extraordinary proof from reliable (secondary) sources. The more extraordinary the claim, the more proof and higher-quality the proof that you will have to provide for the edit to stick in the article.

2) (I have updated the PDF link) That edit looks good, but I don't know about saying exactly 84, since it's based in a secondary source but in a wikipedia editor counting the papers and deciding which are peer-reviewed and which not. Looking at the list, how about we put "80+" (and we don't have to update the count every time he publishes one paper). Mills et. al. have published 80+ peer-reviewed papers[35], mostly in low-impact journals..

3) Personally, I would remove all that whole sentence and replace with statements from high-quality secondary sources. But Mills doesn't have enough coverage to do that. So I'm saying that we'll have to resort to lower-quality sources and to some amount of primary sources in order to cover gaps. (for example, counting the number of papers in a self-published list is using a primary source). Anyways, let's address 2) first. Is 80+ OK with you? --Enric Naval (talk) 11:40, 1 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Enric -- your suggestion in (2) sounds good, thank you. Johnnycpis (talk) 01:26, 2 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have gone ahead and done it. Now we should at finding secondary sources that evaluate the impact of Mills' work. --Enric Naval (talk) 06:20, 2 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I revised. The list at BLP doesn't characterize the journals as low-impact of course, so that is either OR or uncited: it certainly shouldn't be attributed to BLP. If we do have a source for the characterization, we should cite it. LeadSongDog come howl! 13:02, 2 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have grave misgivings about this. If these really are low-impact journals (and from what I can see, they certainly are) then this is a case of WP:UNDUE - and we should simply delete all mention of those articles and stick only with those that are noteworthy enough to be used as references. We don't routinely list papers published by companies like this - the only reason we're doing it here (IMHO) is because of the controversial nature of the "junk science" presented by BLP. Inflating the importance of that nonsense is a really bad idea and turning a statement that used to basically say "They wrote a lot of junk papers" into one that says "Look at all of the important papers they wrote" is a gross distortion of the facts. IMHO, we should do what we do for other companies of this size and simply not mention these papers unless they are needed to reference points made in our article (in which case, they have to pass the WP:RS test). SteveBaker (talk) 15:37, 2 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Are these 80+ publications in top-tier journals? No. Have these publications been academically and independently peer-reviewed by related subject matter academic members of various respected institutions who decided the material was worth publishing? Yes. I find a statement such as "Look at all the important papers they wrote", to be just as much a distortion as one which says "They wrote a lot of junk papers/nonsense". The fact is that 80+ independently peer reviewed papers have been published by Mills. If you or anybody else want to read into it "look at all these important papers" or, "look at how much junk science is published in peer-reviewed journals", that is your choice. I don't believe that undue weight is assigned to a simple statement of fact when your point of contention is only that the peer-reviewed publications are not in top-tier journals. I admit I'm far from a knowledgeable Wikipedia editor and don't know the rules well (very little, in fact), so if consensus is that the 80+ edit should be removed to better follow the rules/spirit/precendence of Wiki editing, then I yield.Johnnycpis (talk) 17:27, 2 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

These 95 (as of July 2011) publications have been a topic of debate here for years now, as has how to characterize them. I suppose we may need an archive section on this question alone, and a FAQ. Simply put, the nature of modern junk science is to create reams of papers (that go largely unread) to create a semblance of credibility. Low impact journals are those with little reputation for quality in their field: science and publishing are both competitive fields, so authors/editors each want to get the best journals/papers they can. An author's consistent inability to get published in high-impact journals is strong evidence that the best editors are unconvinced of the work's merits. However that is only my analysis and has no place in the article. If we are to provide characterization, it should come from published and hence wp:V wp:RS. LeadSongDog come howl! 18:16, 2 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds alot like OR to me. Do you have a reliable source to back up your assertions that "the nature of modern junk science is to create reams of papers (that go largely unread) to create a semblance of credibility" or are you just making it up off the top of your head? By the way here is another peer review article: http://www.springerlink.com/content/x604u4634548p705/ Is "The European Physical Journal D - Atomic, Molecular, Optical and Plasma Physics" another low impact journal that supports scammers so as to give them a "semblance of credibility" in your opinion? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.4.22.216 (talk) 08:07, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See the erratum by the editors of that journal. LeadSongDog come howl! 13:23, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That appears to be a dead link. SteveBaker (talk) 14:18, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think he means this editorial. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:54, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Right. Who knew that the doi resolver can't cope with a terminal period? LeadSongDog come howl! 20:20, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And your point is...what exactly. Are they publishing a scammer's paper to give them "a semblance of credibility" or not? Why are they publishing what many people call pseudoscience? The fact that they wrote the editorial tells me the paper was published in spite of the publishers misgivings, if anything I would say that means that the observations were strong enough to override the editors first instinct and to publish in spite of them. To me that appears to be a mark in Blacklight's favor not a mark against them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.4.22.216 (talk) 00:56, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Clearly the editors of Eur Phys J D were willing to publish the paper but not willing to endorse the hydrino theory used in it. But all that is irrelevant. The paper is in any case a primary source discussing observations, and Mills is hardly independent of those observations, so I don't see on what basis we can possibly characterize it as "another peer review article". LeadSongDog come howl! 05:42, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Should this article include a list of prominent individuals that have been part of the corporate governance of BLP?

The section has been added and removed a few times.

The issue seems difficult to me. LeadSongDog has suggested that there is insufficient references to support it, but they now at least seem to be reasonably referenced.

The issue for me is whether the list is of sufficient interest and relevance to justify its inclusion. Part of the BLP story is the fact that the company has attracted prominent people to be part of its corporate governance. Right now that is about all that is publically known about this. None of these people have said anything about the company after they have left it and none of these people have provided any information about their motivation in joining the company other than some rosy statements around the time they join.

I think a similar issue exists with regard to the list of companies that BLP allegedly had contracts with. We know nothing about the nature of the contracts and mostly we don't know what the expectations of the people who signed these agreements was. In fact, the companies are almost all tiny entities the purpose of which is not clear and listing those companies may imply undo weight as to the significance of the contracts.

I don't know that there is an objective answer as to what is appropriate here. My own thought is that the corporate governance list is too long relative to the information value it supplies. I think what might be more appropriate is a short statement that the corporate governance of BLP has included prominent individuals with a few of the people on the list provided as examples. However an argument can be made that this is a kind of documentation that might be useful to somebody in the future trying to unravel what went on at BLP. --Davefoc (talk) 16:35, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have to say that my inclination is to remove it. It doesn't seem sufficiently notable for us to care out it. That said, I see that these lists are not unusual for businesses in general - so perhaps it's OK. I'm not sure. SteveBaker (talk) 19:30, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

IIRC, it was I that added it in the first place, but the sources were not very credible, and when WMC removed it I was persuaded. I don't see any evidence that the sources do anything more than mirror BLP's press releases. As a private company they don't file with the SEC, so the usual level of documentation is not publicly available. If we are falsely attributing offices to living people we have a BLP problem. Of course any of these individuals could confirm the membership, but I see no evidence that they have done so. It is not unlike all the contract announcements (via H&K press releases) that don't seem to be backed up by corresponding information by the other parties in the "contracts". LeadSongDog come howl! 20:18, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oh dear, did I start this? Looking back: I first removed those who were redlinks [4] (note: at that point they were indeed linked, and red) and then removed the rest with "why do we care"? [5]. And indeed, the question remains: why do we care? The obvious answer is: because having "notable" people on your board conveys respectability. Which is why such a list is entirely appropriate for a corporate website, but less appropriate for wikipedia. Also note the word "notable": that is someone's judgement. In what sense are they notable? The current board [6] (only including directors, not sec) appear to be Scott W. Doyle, H. McIntyre Gardner, John J. Gillen, William R. Good (Assistant Corporate Secretary, Vice President - Administration), Sverre Prytz, Jeffrey C. Petherick, James K. Sims. If we list anyone, it should be the current directors - not former ones. In summary, I agree with Df: more appropriate is a short statement that the corporate governance of BLP has included prominent individuals with a few of the people on the list provided as examples William M. Connolley (talk) 21:23, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Can we find a source more reliable than the BLP website to confirm any of these people other than Mills and Good are still involved? Looking at Doyle, it looks here that he does not mention it if he is. LeadSongDog come howl! 22:41, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I looked at a few of the references and they seem to be other than BLP. My guess is that most of the references are legit and non-BLP or could be made so. The real issue, I think, is whether the list belongs or not and if so should it remain in its current form. I would not feel bad about any decision, but I think the best would be to convert the list to a short paragraph stating that some prominent people have participated in BLP corporate governance and list a few examples. This is interesting information whether BLP is eventually shown to be a complete scam or if BLP releases technology that transforms the world. Perhaps a corporate governance section that lists a few current corporate officers and a brief mention of previous prominent individuals that have served in corporate governance would be best. The most interesting thing and the most useful thing would be to include something about what past board members had to say about what went on in the company. I have never seen even the tiniest indication that anything like that exists. The lack of any information from people that have worked in the company or served in its corporate governance about the nature of the company is an interesting part of the story, but I'm not sure what to make of it and at any rate it is hard to document the absence of something.--Davefoc (talk) 05:25, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Keep. In question is whether this list is of sufficient interest. Are you kidding me? It's the most interesting thing in the whole article! That business, government, and military leaders of this magnitude have been persuaded to become Directors is extremely notable. Every reader is free to draw their own conclusion about whether or not it conveys respectability.

Each listed person has held high office in at least one organization or enterprise that's notable enough to have its own Wikipedia article. That, in turn, lends a great deal of notability to these individuals.

I've never before seen Forbes or Businessweek questioned as to whether they are reliable enough sources.

The current Directors are not necessarily the most notable Directors. We can probably concur that Jordan was one of the most notable Directors, and it's likely that his death is the only reason he's no longer a Director.

It's true that many articles about businesses have a Corporate Governance section. Those who target this particular Corporate Governance section, while tolerating all the others, seem to "have it out" for Blacklight Power... definitely non-neutral behavior.

To answer the question of "Who cares?" I, for one, care, as must everyone else who ever contributed to this section of the article.

(On the subject of redlinks: I thought Wikipedia encourages redlinks, because they spur the creation of additional articles. Is that not the case? I know that Michael H. Jordan started out as a redlink, and look at it now... a fairly robust article that's in seven categories.) 174.24.123.239 (talk) 06:16, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

On the unimportant subject of redlinks: yes. But that means at the moment (or rather back then, and now) those people were not "notable" by the standard of having an article about them. I wouldn't delete just the brackets round the name; I'd delete the whole name as NN.

On the "keep": the arguments you are giving are exactly why I think the section is dubious: it is promo, and that is why you want it in. At the very least, those people who are former directors should be removed, because the section doesn't make it clear that we are mixing past and present; and for all we know those "former" people left because of a deliberate decision not to be involved with BLP William M. Connolley (talk) 12:48, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

On the topic of redlinks, the WP:REDLINK guideline is pretty clear: "Sometimes it is useful in editing article text to create a red link to indicate that a page will be created soon or that an article should be created for the topic because the subject is notable and verifiable."...so in a nutshell - you could only create a redlink if the article that it would hypothetically link to could be a valid article. So redlinking the name of someone who is currently non-notable or for whom too little has been written in WP:RS, is clearly incorrect. But redlinking to the name of a clearly notable person who does not yet have an article written about them is strongly encouraged because it helps Wikipedia to grow. Many people patrol the Special:WantedPages list in search of ideas for new articles - and that list is filled from redlinks in other articles. SteveBaker (talk) 13:57, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Remove. OK - so I was somewhat agnostic about this - but following the discussions above, I have definitely swung around to the "Remove" point of view. Certainly listing past directors is unjustified - that information is simply not notable enough. This is a tiny company, with very little economic impact - it's really borderline whether there should be an article here at all. Past directors certainly don't warrant an exhaustive list even for gigantic corporations. Take a look at ExxonMobil for example...their "Corporate Affairs" section lists the present board of directors - but aside from that, there is only occasional mention of past directors who had some specific impact on the company. Hence, if we have WP:RS that one or more of those past Blacklight directors had had a notable impact on BLP then we could mention them in some kind of corporate history prose section.

Listing the present directors seems more valid - that is the practice in many other articles about companies. But if the only source of that information is the Blacklight website - then I'm strongly dubious. This company has often wrapped itself in the notability of others (eg in claiming that various scientific studies were performed by prestigious universities when in truth, Blacklight only rented time on their equipment)...so it is not beyond belief that they'd do something similar in describing their "directors". They aren't a publicly traded company - so there is no oversight and little legal responsibility in that regard. Hence we must be concerned over WP:BLP issues (that is the Wikipedia policies surrounding "Biographies of Living Persons", not "Black Light Power"!). If we have no independent confirmation that these people truly do actively direct the company - and especially if those people don't admit any such association in any of their public records - then I think we must tread very carefully. WP:BLP is a sensitive matter and must always be handled by erring on the side of caution.

Hence, I feel that we should remove this section - it was only ever a borderline matter, and the lack of third-party confirmation leaves me feeling very uncomfortable about including it in the article. SteveBaker (talk) 13:48, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"it is promo, and that is why you want it in."

Wrong. I'm just looking for consistency. If you delete all of the following, I promise to shut up and never say another word about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklight_Power#Corporate_governance

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell#Corporate_governance

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#Corporate_governance

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rexel#Corporate_governance

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAE_Systems#Corporate_governance

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin#Corporate_governance

"the section doesn't make it clear that we are mixing past and present"

WMC, you seem increasingly desperate to send this information down the memory hole. The current wording, "Notable directors of the company have included," makes it quite clear that we are mixing past and present. If it said "Current directors are," then we would have a problem. 174.24.123.239 (talk) 14:33, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"if the only source of that information is the Blacklight website - then I'm strongly dubious."

That means you're not dubious... because none of the cited sources in the Corporate Governance section are the Blacklight website. 174.24.123.239 (talk) 14:33, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Re "Down the memory hole"? We have article history, don't we?

Re "Consistency" the examples are all public companies with regular SEC filings required by law, hence no real doubt about the people named. BLPI is private, with a history of using Hill & Knowlton scattergun press releases to mislead media outlets into believing things which are not really credible. See anything from the purported licensees, for instance, to indicate otherwise?

Re the business intelligence aggregator cites you like, we have no reason to think they've been through fact checking, but if you like, feel free to take the question to both wp:RSN and wp:BLPN, or if you prefer I'm perfectly willing do so.LeadSongDog come howl! 15:42, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, but with some changesThe sources for the list of directors may not be perfect, but on a practical basis it seems very likely that they are correct. I doubt even the moderately prominent people in the list would allow their names to be used in this way if it weren't true. Although I don't seem to be able to build a consensus for this idea, I think the correct action here is to modify the section so that it begins with a statement about who a few of the highest ranking members of the corporate governance are, followed by a statement that the company has had some prominent board members in the past with the two or three most prominent listed. One way to maintain the documentation benefit of the list without unnecessarily increasing the size of the article would be to list the prominent members as references to the claim that prominent people have been part of BLP corporate governance in the past. Consideration might be given to pointing out board members that were previously were with Connectiv when it entered into its agreement with BLP.--Davefoc (talk) 18:26, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

By a long coincidence, wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Reliability of Executive Biographies on BusinessWeek.com asked about the same Michael Jordan. It's a sad example of why they can't always be trusted. LeadSongDog come howl! 04:06, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure if you're being facetious with the "long coincidence" thing, but it wasn't a coincidence, it was me going to RSN and asking the question, just like you challenged me to. Of course I changed the name of the company, to prevent the controversial nature of Blacklight from tainting their answer. It's amusing that you challenged me to go there, but when they didn't give the answer you were hoping for, you call it a sad example of why they can't always be trusted. Sorry they didn't rule in your favor... it happens sometimes. 174.24.123.239 ([[User

talk:174.24.123.239|talk]]) 22:40, 30 September 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.46.200.232 (talk • contribs) 22:45, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Silly me, I didn't recognize that it was you using multiple IPs. Please don't do that without making it clear, the practice is frowned upon. Showing a dead man as an active board member is as clear an example as I can imagine of sloppy fact checking. If you look closer at the comments (not rulings) on WP:RSN you will see the phrase "absent conflicting information" in Collect's comment. Clearly the NYTimes obit is conflicting information. Quaint though it may be, I still find early death to be rather sad. So yes, for me at least it was a "sad example".LeadSongDog come howl! 05:12, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"a history of using Hill & Knowlton scattergun press releases to mislead media outlets into believing things which are not really credible. See anything from the purported licensees, for instance, to indicate otherwise?"

I don't know of anything misleading in the press releases, and I don't know of any obligation the licensees have to make further statements. There is probably no downside to becoming a licensee. As far as we know, the licensees will not be asked for any funds until actionable intellectual property is made available. If I were a licensee, I would just quietly and patiently wait for something actionable to come out of BLP. 174.24.123.239 (talk) 22:59, 30 September 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.46.200.232 (talk • contribs) 23:01, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Hill & Knowlton practices are discussed in the archives, see for yourself, I see no reason to rehash it. LeadSongDog come howl! 05:12, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep as notable and good form to improve the article. The Directors have a fiduciary duty, just as we have a duty to peacefully improve articles with relevant and sourced content. Zulu Papa 5 * (talk) 00:47, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please read the discussion above. Dead or former directors have no fiduciary duty William M. Connolley (talk) 09:01, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is a lot of talk above; I've hacked the section in an effort to see where consensus lies. I found it interesting that one of the few notable-in-the-sense-of-having-an-article people, Jordan, is (a) dead and (b) known as a turn-around expert; that seems very relevant. I deleted all the former non-notable people. That the founder is CEO, prez and chair is significant (showing how much of the power is in one set of hands). I left the only other former who had an article William M. Connolley (talk) 08:53, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, http://people.forbes.com/profile/merrill-a-mcpeak/51565 didn't work for me William M. Connolley (talk) 09:00, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I always like it when somebody does something instead of more conversation. Alas I'm more the conversing type. As to your edits: I think Shelby T. Brewer, former assistant secretary of energy was prominent enough to deserve a mention. He also headed up a substantial company and as I recall attempted a bit of synergy between BLP and his former company. He also had some of the more glowing quotes about the wonderfulness of BLP attested to him. The most interesting thing would be if some of these former cheerleaders had something to say about why their rosy ideas about BLP went nowhere. It is a bit strange that after twenty years of this nobody previously associated with BLP or any of its investors has had anything to say about the company.--Davefoc (talk) 21:05, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]