Talk:Koch network - Wikipedia

...Stand Together, a nonprofit focused on supporting community groups. The stated priorities of the restructured Koch network include efforts aimed at increasing employment, addressing poverty and addiction, ensuring excellent education, building a stronger economy, and bridging divides and building respect.

Bullshit. They are actively funding efforts against all of those things. This kind of propaganda should not be allowed in the lead section. Viriditas (talk) 23:52, 21 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

I posted this in "Political activities of the Koch brothers" under the "COVID-19" subhead. It is sourced to the Washington Post and a letter that newspaper obtained from the outfit to which the Charles Koch Institute is a "major benefactor." See https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/10/01/masks-schools-koch-money/:

The Charles Koch Institute is a "major benefactor" of the Independent Women’s Forum, a dark money nonprofit organization that opposes efforts to combat the coronavirus through mask mandates in schools.[171] The group circulated a template letter to its members encouraging them to personalize and mail it to "your own school superintendents and administrators, principals, and teachers!" Among other things the proposed letter falsely asserted that "young kids do not significantly spread COVID either" and claimed that "common sense" teaches that requiring masks in school may lead to anxiety, depression, decreases in socialization skills, and increases in tooth decay in children.[172]

User William M. Connolley asserts flimsy dubious for erasing it, claiming that it is not NPOV, i.e. "NPOV; your desc doesn't tally with our article on them. And the material seems to mostly belong there, rather than here" I have no idea what he means by "our article" and his statement that the sourced material "seems to mostly belong there, rather than here" makes no sense. If he has a problem with the neutrality of the entry, he should suggest revisions, not simply lop it off. I will revert if he doesn't respond in a constructive way. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Podgorney (talk • contribs) 02:09, 3 October 2021 (UTC)Reply

In an effort to be responsive to User William M. Connolley's remarks, I have edited the entry as follows:

"The Charles Koch Institute is a "major benefactor" of the Independent Women’s Forum, a nonprofit organization that opposes efforts to combat the coronavirus through mask mandates in schools.[171] The group circulated a template letter to its members encouraging them to personalize and mail it to "your own school superintendents and administrators, principals, and teachers!" Among other things the proposed letter asserted that "young kids do not significantly spread COVID either" and claimed that "common sense" teaches that requiring masks in school may lead to anxiety, depression, decreases in socialization skills, and increases in tooth decay in children.[172]"

The citations are to the Washington Post and a letter posted by the newspaper.Podgorney (talk) 17:30, 3 October 2021 (UTC)Reply

To add to this article: mention of the Koch brothers's political data analytics company called i360. Source 173.88.246.138 (talk) 02:35, 26 December 2021 (UTC)Reply

@William M. Connolley:@172.110.60.4:@JPxG: I'm opening this discussion because I think all of you made good points in your edit summaries but we aren't supposed to converse through edit summaries we're supposed to converse on the talk page. The IP stated when they added the text "John Birch Society mention added, given the significance and relevance to political activities" which at first glance appears odd given there being no mention of the John Birch Society in the body. JPxG countered with "not providing a reliable source (WP:CITE, WP:RS)" which is very reasonable given that it does not appear in the current body. The IP replied "Wikipedia is the "reliable source" for Fred Koch being a co-founder of John Birch Society" which I believe is a misunderstanding of the relevant policy. William M. Connolley reverted with the edit summary "this is the koch bros article, not the sins-of-the-fathers-unto-the-7th-generation article" which touched on none of the reasons JPxG brought up nor did it provide any basis in policy or guideline for the summary, this appears to just be their personal opinion. The IP countered with "Fred Koch's co-founding of the John Birch Society is relevant, given that son Charles Koch was also a member. This is an article about the politics (!) of the Koch brothers, and failing to mention to the connection to the John Birch Society would be to hide relevant factual information." which despite their previous misunderstanding of policy does actually appear to be a nearly infallible WP:NPOV argument. William M. Connolley ends with "as before: no, this is about the sons" which is again bizarrely wrong and besides the point but no matter because the revert was legit. Now here's my problem, when I search "John Birch Society" I actually find it in the sources, we appear to already have a number of sources specifically for this claim, however it appears to have been scrubbed from the article. I will delve into the history on this but interested in hearing what you guys think, I'd especially like to hear more of Connolley's rationale for non-inclusion about info about the father of the brothers. I've just never heard anyone make an argument like that and if it has any basis in policy or guideline I'd like to know because I sure as heck can't think of any. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:04, 1 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Looking at the history we mentioned their dad's founding position at JBS for years, which is why we still have sources with quotes specifically for it. Will try to find the edit which removed it. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:16, 1 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

So it was removed in this edit [1] with the edit summary "ALL articles mentioning living people are subject to that policy - in the case at hand, the material is NOT RELEVANT to this article - period." despite the second source being a New Yorker article entitled "Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama" which would mean that it was relevant to this article... Period. Perhaps @Collect: can explain? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:22, 1 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

I did the initial revert while using WP:HG, so didn't have the chance to look deep into article history, but I think that (barring some other consensus or precedent) William's reasoning makes sense -- the article is about the guys, not their father. That's not to say that information on their family background should be excised completely. Upon some reflecton, it certainly seems UNDUE in the lead, though I can't speak to the rest of the article. jp×g 17:46, 1 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

It should seem obvious that opposition to contraception is not significant political movement & that the linking of that with opposing baby-murder is a propagandistic crock. But at any rate, the linking done in the article was deleted on the grounds that it had no source, and the closest citation to this (citation to a previous sentence) did not evidence the word contraception at all when searched. (AltheaCase (talk) 18:24, 13 June 2023 (UTC))Reply