Talk:Ben Shapiro

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Ben Shapiro page.
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Umm

User:Rupert loup, that's not what these terms mean in the common usage. Modern day liberal != classic liberalism. GMG^talk 22:43, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

The category is not about the American usage, is about the philosophy as a whole and its definition, we have related articles of diferent persons of different times and not only from the United States. If you want to encompase the specific American kind of liberalism then you should create a subcategory, which I think it would be helpful because the increasing creation of related articles. Rupert loup (talk)

I dunno. I can say that that category is bonkers. If you can classify UKIP, a far right party, along with Liberal Democrats, then you don't have a very well defined category. GMG^talk 23:21, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

The UKIP is "influenced by Thatcherism and classical liberalism, it describes itself as economically libertarian and promotes liberal economic policies." Being right wing or left wing is irrelevant, and those political parties are not in the scope of this talk page. Rupert loup (talk) 23:37, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Calling Transgenderism mental disorder

According to Shapiro’s list of all the dumb things he has said so far, he calls it that, one of his most controversial comments is his claim that “transgenderism is a mental disorder” which, unlike some other comments, he does not regret saying. Shouldn’t that be in his Wikiquote page? —This unsigned comment is by 198.200.115.29 (talk • contribs) 00:00‎ (UTC), 21 November 2019.

When? Where? Relevance? In a context? Read WQ:PG and the other specific guidelines to consider for your reply. —Eihel (talk) 07:26, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

"Israelis like to build" quote missing context

According to [1], he "was clearly talking about Israeli and Arab leadership, as well as terror-supporting people in the Arab world," which he clarified that same day in later tweets. Examples: [2], [3], [4], [5], [6] I could go on, but I hope this is enough for you. Wilhelm von Hindenburger (talk) 12:54, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Reorganization of page

While I understand that the changes were made to categorize the media in which quotes have appeared, this page now does not meet our established template - which call for chronological sorting of quotes rather than sorting by media. Please discuss such wholesale changes (e.g., at the discussion page for the people template or in Village Pump) before making them. I'll place a cleanup tag on the page. Thanks. ~ UDScott (talk) 19:45, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Okay. Perhaps I have moved too swiftly here. I will keep that in mind in the future.

I will share some thoughts of my own below. Make of them what you will.

The standard template encourages grouping quotes by work, and then listing those works in chronological order. If one looks at the page of Charles Darwin, for example, it has a section for quotes from The Voyage of the Beagle (1839), followed by a section for On the Origins of Species (1859), and so on, up to a section for Autobiography (1958). Then, following all that, there is a section called "Other letters, notebooks, journal articles, recollected statements", i.e., a section for everything else.

Were one to apply the same structure to the Ben Shapiro page, then presumably one would start with a section for the earliest book, then the next book, and so on, up to the most recent book. Then, following all that, one might have a big miscellaneous category for everything else.

I don't know if this would improve matters very much. I reorganized the page because it felt like the entire page was a big miscellaneous category for everything, where the more worthwhile and thoughtful quotes were meshed together with everything else. The chronological ordering of the quotes did little to improve matters. In some respects, it made things worse, as it gave priority to statements that Shapiro made when he was quite a bit younger and was just starting his career. Not all of these quotes have aged well. Indeed, Shapiro himself has conceded that he has made some blunders in the past, and he has disavowed some of this own statements.

The problem is that the page paints an unnecessarily unflattering picture of the person. Even if it is granted that he has made some mistakes, must those be emphasized above everything else? Shouldn't the focus be on uncovering whatever good a person may have done in his life, and giving weight to quotes that are thoughtful and insightful? After all, those are the quotes that are the most likely to be of value to other people.

I have to say that this has been an extraordinarily difficult page to try to improve. In the "Quotes about Shapiro" section, for example, there is hardly a single positive quote about Shapiro. Is that fair? Does that paint a representative picture of who he is as a human being? It reads like character assassination.

It may come to a point where any sensible person dreads finding an entry about themselves on Wikiquote, because the standard template is so flawed that it tends to paint a messy and unflattering picture of its subject, especially now that we are living in the information age. If it can be done to Shapiro, it can be done to anyone. From an ethical standpoint, it should also be taken into account that Shapiro is living, breathing human being who is likely to be following this page, and in all likelihood, he is affected by it.

Nevertheless, I am not entirely pessimistic here. In fact, I am cautiously optimistic that things can be improved by means of better organization. I think what is called for is a richer template, or at least a revision of the current template. But I am a fairly new user at this site, so I don't know if any suggestions I may make will carry any weight with regard to established procedure. All I can do here is share some thoughts.

In any case, I strongly recommend that the page is at least structured as well as the Charles Darwin page is, and that quotes from Shapiro's books are listed before anything else. What one is to do with the remaining quotes, which are quite many, is not entirely clear to me at this point.

I hope my comments do not come across as too critical, and that it is evident that I am acting in good faith. BurningLibrary (talk) 21:51, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Update: I have reorganized the page again. Hopefully it adheres better to the standard template now. BurningLibrary (talk) 15:54, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your thorough and thoughtful response (and for the further attempt to reorganize). I do like your second attempt more than the first. I do understand your argument and it is something that I believe has been discussed in the past. Perhaps there is even a simpler answer - to show quotes in reverse chronological order so that the most recent are at the top? In any case, whether doing something like that or more like what you are advocating, this should be discussed and perhaps the templates are due for a change. One problem I see with having a catch-all section at the end is that it becomes a bit cumbersome to try to establish a standard template. Some of the sections you have used (like Talks and debates or Question and answer sessions) are ones that may not fit with other people's pages. The nice thing about chronological sorting is that there is no debate about where to put a quote. Your example of Charles Darwin is actually one that I would change as well. Instead, we usually use formatting like on Charles Dickens, where individual quotes are in the first section, before any subsections for individual works. Again, I am certainly open to discussion, but I'm not sure we want to fully break this open. ~ UDScott (talk) 17:56, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for a courteous reply. If Charles Darwin is not a good example here, perhaps you could point me in the direction of a page about a famous person that better adheres to the standard template, and which the Ben Shapiro page could be compared to.

Although I will offer some arguments in the following text, it is done more in the spirit of clarifying a few lines of thought, and less in the spirit of a debate. Or to phrase it differently, a distinction may be drawn between discussing matters and debating them. For that matter, I am not sure that the topics under discussion here lend themselves very well to a "debate" in the classical sense, because there isn't a single right answer to be found with regard to how things ought to be done. There are only different solutions with different trade-offs, and none are perfect.

The way I see it, there are two aspects to take into consideration. One is how one is to order entries in a textual category (e.g., a category of quotes). They might be ordered in chronological order, in reverse chronological order, in alphabetical order, and so on. On this point, the standard template does offers a guideline: the recommended practice is to order entries in chronological order.

A second aspect is which categories, or sections, a page should contain. If one looks at the page of a person who has written several books, then quotes from one book can be said to constitute one category; quotes from another book, another category. Categories can also be ordered chronologically, so that earlier books are listed before later ones. And the quotes from each book may also be ordered, e.g., by page number, so that they are listed in the order they occur in the book.

What I am getting at is that the disorder I have perceived on the Ben Shapiro page, and have tried to do something about, for better or worse, is less a matter of ordering, and more a matter of categorization. That is to say that different Shapiro quotes belong to different categories, and the disorder stems from mixing things together. For example, there is the category of statements that Shapiro has made in books he has written, and there is the category of posts that Shapiro has made on social media. These are not the same.

What one gets when one places everything in a single category is something that might be termed a "mixed category". They are quite common in the digital age. To quote from The Lonely City by Olivia Laing, where she describes her experiences with Twitter: "Lens solution, book cover, news of a death, protest picture, art opening, joke about Derrida, refugees in the forests of Macedonia, hashtag shame, hashtag lazy, climate change, lost scarf, joke about Daleks: a stream of information, sentiment and opinion that some days, most days maybe, received more attention than anything actual in my life."

Mixed categories have their place, but they tend to stay mixed regardless of how one orders them. What I think the Ben Shapiro page calls for is something with a little more granularity. For example, statements that a person has made on social media should be separated from statements they have made in written works. Statements that a person has made on television also belong in their own category, I think.

I can appreciate that it is a complex task to design a standard template that works well in a large number of cases. I also agree that it makes for a better browsing experience when Wikiquote pages adhere to the same standard. So I appreciate where you are coming from on that.

In any case, I don't have a perfect solution at hand right now. The best I can do is to describe the problem in detail, to the degree that I understand it. There might be aspects to it that have eluded my attention; certainly, the topic is a complex one. That is why I think it is advisable to steer away from having a "debate", and rather attempt to have an open-ended conversation. BurningLibrary (talk) 21:38, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree with most of what you have written here - and I agree that perhaps this discussion does not apply to every people page, but rather to a select group that has large numbers of quotes across multiple media (and thus are likely more contemporary people). I will also say that I do not have the best answer yet either and I believe discussing it will help bring out the best path forward. One thing that I thought of regarding the use of a chronological ordering is that it does show how a person's view might have evolved over time (sometimes this is not always good, as you pointed out earlier), which would not be shown if the quotes are grouped by the type of media in which they appear. A good example of this is Albert Einstein, where I believe it is helpful to see how his opinions may have changed over time.

I also want to say that just because we are trying to standardize pages as much as we can (to fit within a common template), that does not mean there cannot be exceptions. For some it may more sense to have a different layout. In general, the times when we group quotes from a specific work it is only when there are enough to do so (say at least 3 or more from the same source). But what you are talking about is not a common source for a group of quotes, but rather a common medium from which quotes are taken. I am not against this per se, and as you point out in the case of Shapiro, the medium from which a quote is taken often drives the thinking behind it.

I guess when it comes down to it, I don't quite see the need to separate out some of the subgroups you have used on the Shapiro page (e.g., Articles, Talks and debates, and Question and answer sessions). I would actually group all of these together and sort by date. I get sorting out TV show appearances, books, or Twitter feeds, but I don't understnd the need to subcategorize the others. ~ UDScott (talk) 22:20, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

I like your point that chronological order allows one to see how the person's views have evolved over time, as in the case of Albert Einstein. This made me think of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the distinction that is often made between the "younger Wittgenstein" and the "older Wittgenstein". People change, and a mature and experienced intellect often sees things differently.

However, there is a fundamental distinction between Ben Shapiro on the one hand, and Einstein and Wittgenstein on the other. Ben Shapiro is alive. The others are not.

A living person is still producing output. They are still refining and clarifying their thought, they are still figuring out who they are and what they stand for, and they are still engaged in a conversation with the world. If the life of a deceased person is a "finished work", then the life of a living person is very much a work in progress.

When it comes to the living, the present is more important than the past. If, for example, Shapiro were invited to a podcast to promote a book of his, then we would be assume that he would be talking about a book he had recently written. Certainly, he might talk about his other books as well, but we would assume that he had done something new and was invited to talk about that. In other words, what he has done recently is more important than what he did in the past.

Another example of this is blogs and social media. If a person maintains a blog, the latest submissions are listed first, and the whole site is arranged in reverse chronological order. The same holds true for a social media profile: the newest posts are listed first, and one has to scroll down to view older posts.

So I would suggest:

1. There should be separate templates for those who are alive and those who are not.

2. For living people, the template should recommend reverse chronological order.

3. For the others, normal chronological order.

Perhaps this would help depict people in a better light. Food for thought.

With regard to categorization, I have removed the "Question and answer sessions" subcategory. Perhaps things could simplified even further. BurningLibrary (talk) 19:26, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

@UDScott: What is the people template?

As someone who likes to add quotes to existing pages, I am also interested in the topic of standard page organization. It drives me bananas when I have to spend a long time in order to locate where the quote should be placed on the page.

Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 22:22, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

I was referring to Wikiquote:Templates/People, but also the general way in which we lay out pages for people on the site (as opposed to films, literary works, etc.). There are templates for all the different types of pages here: Wikiquote:Templates and this is also a valuable resource that will automatically populate a new page with the appropriate template: Help:Starting a new page. Cheers! ~ UDScott (talk) 22:47, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Unsourced quotes

• Ben Shapiro is a virulent antisemite who has spent his career "upping his Jewish identity" in order to get away with spouting Neo-Nazi talking points vilifying American Jews.
  • Eli Valley (3 February 2020)