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Q: Why doesn't the article cover more of Chomsky's view on X political event?
A: This article doesn't cover all of Chomsky's many political views, only the ones that have had significant secondary source discourse to factor into what a general reader would need to know about his general biography. The Political positions of Noam Chomsky article goes into more depth for those with specific interests.
Noam Chomsky is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
Current status: Former featured article, current good article
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Define "rationalism" as parallel to definition of "empiricism"
Get a better source for Saudi Arabia political views; try McGilvray
Get a better source for views on partition of Palestine
Reduce hagiography in § In politics: remove quotes, pare second paragraph, expand on Srebrenica massacre remarks, consider page number for Rabbani 2012, consider paring re: Horowitz, Kay, ADL, Dershowitz
Address history of controversial statements on genocide in the political beliefs section doi:10.5038/1911-9933.14.1.1738
Turn the achievements laundry list into readable prose
Confirm with sourced prose or remove the flatlist items from the infobox
Add commas after "in year X" clauses
Consider whether to expand on his views on the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Incorporate noteworthy anti-Chomsky critique into the Political views section so the final section can focus on Influence/Legacy
Among some other problems throughout his life, Noam was close with former financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Noam has claimed to have met with him several times after his original conviction and often gave extremely lame or bizarre responses to people on this topic such as "none of your business" or "he served his time" despite the severity of his crimes and the heinous nature. Cruetresin (talk) 02:32, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"Controversy" sections are often the result of poor writing, noxious and poorly representative; the current article does the much preferable thing of interspersing those details throughout the article where they actually belong, in proportion to how they are represented in sources about Chomsky per WP:NPOV. Remsense ‥ 论02:38, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We don't put emphasis on the Epstein connection because reliable sources don't. If the goal amounts to activism, then the intent is misplaced. I'm fairly sure this discussion has been had before, but if you want to pitch your case you can collate some sources here—I'm sure many are of relatively low quality (not dismissing the situation itself here, don't misunderstand) but generally these cases are decided based on what the best available sources have to say. Remsense ‥ 论02:43, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I guess it would depend on what a reliable source is but regardless Chomsky himself has endorsed that he has met with him.
The other part of the equation here is one of proveable interest versus innuendo: it's simply not that interesting on an encyclopedia what friends someone has unless they, y'know, do something (more substantial than move money, I have to specify, even a lot of money)—even if the WSJ wrote about it, there's just not much for us to synthesize of encyclopedic interest from that. I get it's frustrating for people who smell smoke, as it were—it's irrelevant here, but I happen not to think much of the Epstein connection with Chomsky in particular—but we need sources saying there's a big fire if we don't want to go afoul of our policies about biographies of living people. We can't just write suggestively about smoke, even if it's well-sourced. Remsense ‥ 论03:04, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well first of all the mere relationship with the most infamous sex offender of all time years after his conviction and being listed on Epstein's calendar should be enough to warrant a mention. Secondly, he had been given money, financial advice, free trips (not to Little St. James) but flown around to various places to meet with Epstein, and many other things that should warrant at the very little a mention of it all while not denying it and keeping everything extremely vague on exactly what happened. Kinda insane to just call having a relationship with the most heinous person in the world in both criminality and lifestyle "just smoke". Cruetresin (talk) 03:24, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I really do understand why you say all this, but I'll try to reiterate the position: we do not want to slander anyone or insinuate they did things they did not do. Generally, an encyclopedia article would not mention that X public figure moved $200,000 for Y public figure if there is not something more interesting involved there. We have nothing more material to say in that vein here, so if we include the $200,000 thing, we are in effect publishing innuendo implying Chomsky did awful things without actually saying that he did. Remsense ‥ 论03:33, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]