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Hospital of birth cited is hearsay, not fact
This is the same troll, back again. Same minor syntax errors, same paranoia flavor, same insistence that smear campaign material be integrated. ThuranX (talk) 17:50, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
The FAQ in the talk page has a bunch of problems
Academics
Obama is loosely referred to as a 'professor', when he was teaching; however, as the article points out, he was a 'Lecturer' and a 'Senior Lecturer'. He should be referred to as a 'lecturer'. KenmanLF (talk) 13:18, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
Indeed. What matters is what the university says. And what it says is clear.
But let's put that aside for a moment and see what the WP article says. It's that:
Any moderately alert reader is likely to think "Huh?" The period is divided into two; for each of these Obama was something other than "Professor", yet the two add up to the period he is said to have been a "professor".
What the "professor" bit means here is that -- to me, most uninterestingly -- Lecturers and Senior Lecturers are loosely termed professors at U Chi. This tells us nothing about what he actually did. Use of the word "classified" is wordy too. So, my suggestion:
This neither can be misread as saying he was a Professor (he wasn't) nor implies that he wasn't a professor (he was). Nit-pickers, axe-grinders and miscellaneous fanatics would be served up with the existing, informative and excellent footnote. -- Hoary (talk) 05:27, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
Let's just wait on it a while. It might be worth noting that this thread was started by KenmanLF's very first edit. PhGustaf (talk) 02:24, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
The article asserts stuff, you do, ThuranX does, I do. There's not much discussion going on, however. PhGustav, you say that "the fix" (singular definite) is not to mention "lecturer" at all. Actually that's only one among three or more fixes, and while reasonable people may disagree on this I don't think it's the best fix. However, I've already said that I think it would be an improvement on what's there now. ¶ ThuranX, when you were not writing about the identity and/or motivations of the username who most recently brought up this little matter, you pointed out that the university calls Obama a professor (something I have never disputed) but then continued by talking about "nit-picking" and "a semantics game". I rather agree with you there too. What's important is that Obama was an active and eminent teacher of constitutional law at U Chicago. Whether he was a "(Senior) Lecturer" or "professor" or (correctly but confusingly) both is indeed by the way, and that's why my final suggestion was to delegate the whole matter of nomenclature to the footnote and instead just to say what he did. ¶ This nomenclature is either important or it isn't. You say it isn't. I say it isn't. So let's drop it. ¶ If on the other hand it is important (another option that I'm willing to consider), then it's worth presenting in such a way that it doesn't look self-contradictory. We can hardly write:
and I suggest something like:
It's not pretty, but it's less likely to appear as a typo or contradiction than what we have now, and it does away with the slightly odd "classified". -- Hoary (talk) 06:03, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
Just to add my two cents, the university said, after the "controversy," that they "regarded" him as a professor - that's all fine and dandy, but Frank Abagnale was "regarded" as a teaching assistant when he forged a degree from Columbia University and he was also "regarded" as a lawyer when he forged another degree from Harvard. The point is that what people "regard" is plainly pointless - the real questions are what is a professor and what is a lecturer? In my mind, a professor holds an advanced degree in the field they are teaching, trains people up to masters/Phd level in their field, and produces academic writings on their subject. As far as I know, Barack meets none of those criteria and therefore is plainly not a professor - he is exactly what his title stated - a lecturer. TheGoodLocust (talk) 20:32, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
<outdent>"Primary sources that have been reliably published (for example, by a university press or mainstream newspaper ) may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. Without a secondary source, a primary source may be used only to make descriptive claims, the accuracy of which is verifiable by a reasonable, educated person without specialist knowledge. For example, an article about a novel may cite passages from the novel to describe the plot, but any interpretation of those passages needs a secondary source."
I rehighlighted that for you. Also, and more importantly the source that is being used and misinterpreted isn't even a university newspaper - it is a blurb on a university website. So, if we are supposed to "use care" with primary sources, then why are we quoting a university website and then calling that a "university newspaper?"TheGoodLocust (talk) 23:52, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
←This again? See Talk:Barack Obama/Archive 24#Professor, for last year's version of this idiotic argument - I suggested wording then which I think stuck for a while, although I don't remember now - close to Sheffield Steel's suggestion: Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School part-time from 1993 until his election... . I'd go with that, or with SS's or with lower case professor which is what dozens of sources use, and I'd suggest we end this. Tvoz / 19:18, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Update to section
I'm starting a new section in case anyone wants to talk about the actual text. I've made a fairly minor (in my opinion) bold edit (after goofing with a big fat typo that Thuranx caught quickly and reverted - my bad) that attempts to smooth out the description of Obama's teaching career. It avoids any attempt to classify what he did, and simply says he taught constitutional (and others - see the sources) law courses at the school for 12 years, and then gives his official position. If anyone wants to go into the nitty gritty about calling him a "professor" or not, and explaining how Chicago actually classifies such things, I don't think that's really necessary but there's plenty of room in the footnote for that. And folks, a strong request with some teeth in it - please keep it on topic and don't use this occasion to complain about other editors. Hope that helps. Wikidemon (talk) 00:56, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
←There are plenty of sources that refer to Obama as a "Professor", so I see no reason why this title should not be used per previous (exhaustively explored) consensus discussions. -- Scjessey (talk) 03:24, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
off-topic
Ah yes because the New York Times is a "great" newspaper...good grief. And yes, they, like most newspapers are simply repeating the myth of Obama. You say there is no reason to take it out and I say there is no reason to include it. I have a source that has actual expertise in this area and you have a fluff piece from a biased paper. Uhh...hello? McFly? But hey, I like your argument, "this is what we've always said and so this is what we must always say" - I guess that makes it easy to ignore my new and superior source of information (not to mention one that actually lines up with the facts you always seem to ignore (e.g. no advanced degree in law)). TheGoodLocust (talk) 04:00, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
<outdent> Okay, so he earmarks over a million dollars for the University of Chicago's hospital (a month before his wife gets a 200% raise there), $8 million for human genome research there, which comes out to $9 million total, and then later on their PR office gives him a good statement and they are completely unbiased? Really? Really ? You might want to read up on conflict of interest, and you might want think whether it was a good idea to piss off their current Senator/possibly future president or not. Oh, and no academic papers aren't required to be called a professor, hell I used to be called professor when I w
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