Talk:Atrios

Biography assessment rating comment

WikiProject Biography Assessment Drive

Active politician tag re definition: "A person who galvanizes public opinion".

The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- Yamara 09:05, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Notability tag

Added the notability tag as over half the sources cited are by the person who is also the topic of the article. Clear COI.

Merge?

This is better merged into the article on Thomas Friedman than the one on Atrios. It's about how this Pulitzer Prize winner actually pulls his "prize-winning analysis" out of his ass after all.

Don't Merge

If I want to look up Friendman units, why do I need to read re Atrios. The FU needs to be as popular as Watergate so that people who messed up Iraq are at least at par with Nixon (in terms of "bad"), if not more.

Please Don't Merge

This is important enough to keep as a separate entry --Jocelynbeale 06:12, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Vanity ad?

Nah, this guy's definitely big enough to merit an entry in here if any blogs are gonna have entries at all. I added some info on the blog itself so as to beef this up a little. Wish I could find out how much cash he raised for Kerry somewhere; it was big bucks. Mcsweet

According to this article, Atrios had raised $275,000 by 07-27-2004.--Kristjan Wager 08:38, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Repurposing

'Repurposing' is really jargon-y and corporate-sounding.

Find a more apt way to phrase it, then. Chris Cunningham 09:40, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

West Wing

It may be true that Atrios was portrayed on West Wing, but what about Josh Lyman, who was supposedly based on Rahm Emanuel?

Merge

AfD is always a pain, but merging is fairly easy. Friedman (unit) isn't really notable enough to have its own article, this article is still pretty short, and as a neologism it'll end up getting deleted anyway if it's left. I reckon this should be merged. Chris Cunningham 09:30, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Merge completed. See Talk:Friedman (unit) for discussion of the issue. Chris Cunningham 09:37, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Do NOT Merge

I disagree strongly with Mr. Cunningham's contention.

It is not merely a neologism, it mocks something that conservative (and some liberal) pro-Iraqi War commentators and politicians keep saying, which is they want to keep putting off making a hard decision about whether the US should stay in Iraq or not and that 6 months will somehow make the difference, and yet they do bother to explain what will be different if things don't change in 6 months other than they will add another Friedman Unit to the schedule, as it were.

More importantly, if Wikipedia insists on merging the term Friedman (Unit) then it must also merge Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) with the article Charles Krauthammer. Otherwise, this is not in fact a neutral policy you're carrying out here, and instead an attempt to marginalize a liberal saying that is in fact used on multiple blogs around the Internet, while permitting a conservative saying to remain untouched.

I must also add that I find it odd and unnecessary to merge this subject at all, since it is rich with content and cites multiple examples of evidence of its use, and unlike other encyclopedias, Wikipedia does not have space limitations as such. Therefore, why does this need to be merged again?

Reader: Barry In Houston 04:54 PM CDT 2007-03-17.

Do not merge, part two

I think it is absurd to merge this with Atrios, as the previous entry stated, it's an important subject that has numerous examples of Friedman himself and many other pundits and politicians using the "next 6 months are critical" phrase. It is a mainstay in the bloggosphere, used almost as often as MSM (Mainstream Media), LOL (laugh out loud), and IMO (in my opinion). It's an important Internet expression, and it's a phrase that politicans have used ad nauesum (with numerous examples listed on the Friedman Unit page).

Reader: Pondbrillance.

Agreed; don't merge

• Atrios is not the only person that's used the term "Friedman unit." If it should be merged anywhere, it should be merged into the Tom Friedman article. Vidor 01:47, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Agree: don't merge with Atrios. Billbrock 03:36, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Friedman Unit Is Like Truthiness

It is in very wide usage, regardless of who coined the term. Should we merge "Truthiness" back into Stephen Colbert? Of course not. The suggestion of merging is non-sensical. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Msaroff (talk • contribs) 03:42, 18 March 2007 (UTC).Msaroff 03:44, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Friedman Unit is like Godwin's Law

Godwin's Law has its own entry, and both have a universal application beyond their original creator. There is no reason this should be singled out as belonging to Atrios when it is widely used by others (as noted in the article). Davidhc

Do Not Merge

The Friedman Unit is a key observation of the power that punditry has to manipulate, and its fragile transparency. It stopped being a neologism over six months ago. Yamara 09:05, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Don't Merge

It perfectly encapsulates a ridiculous and dangerous phenomenon in the media and in political decision-making. The examples on the wiki should be reason enough to keep the entry.

We are not talking about one person's pet redundant neologism (and even if we WERE, it should still be included in an individual wiki!) FU is a freestanding concept, and WIDELY invoked, and widely referred to, and concerns a critical aspect of war-planning, and therefore the health of nations. It is nonsensical to suggest a merge. If something is a free-standing concept, that appears constantly throughout the media, it's just pretentious and arrogant to suggest a merge (or in other cases, deletion.) Merging it provides no benefit to anybody whatsoever.

Why do people insist on CREATING the same LIMITATION of coverage that has and always harm print encyclopedias? 69.95.39.34 16:59, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Do not merge

Use of the term "Friedman Unit" is a genuine phenomenon with its own history, about which a person may be interested without caring particularly to learn about Atrios. It no longer has much if anything to do with Atrios himself. Accordingly, merging it with the Atrios entry would be both inappropriate and confusing. It's really irrelevant whether one agrees or disagrees with the political sentiments expressed in using it, or whether the world would be a better or worse place for having an entry for this term.

This is not to say that I think the article could not be significantly improved; but my thoughts on that are not germane here. I will say this much: I suspect much of the discomfort with the article has to do not with the legitimacy of the entry itself, but with the way it has been written. In that case, anyone wishing to improve the entry is welcome to edit it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Zinnyard (talk • contribs) 20:59, 18 March 2007 (UTC).

Doesn't matter who invented it - it's been set free and is now living on its own

I had understood what Friedman Units were, and where they came from long before I ever found out that it was Atrios that had coined the term. The only reason to put anything about Friedman Units under Atrios would be to say something like "Also, he invented the Friedman Unit".

Might make sense to have a small line about it under Friedman, also, but Friedman Unit definitely deserves its own entry. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.32.154.249 (talk) 21:04, 18 March 2007 (UTC).

don't merge

the friedman-unit page is far too long to be lumped into another page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.190.209.39 (talk) 00:23, 19 March 2007 (UTC).

Merge with TOM FRIEDMAN - or don't merge

If someone is looking for Friedman units and doesn't know where to look, the logical place for them to start would be with the article on Tom Friedman. But my preference is that because you might come upon the term in a variety of ways, the best way of handling it is to keep it a separate article. It is way too long to be a mere sidebar to the Atrios article - it has nearly 40 references of its own. This is quite different from a similar piece of political jargon from the right - dittohead, which has also been proposed to be merged - but in that case into a specific article just for Jargon of The Rush Limbaugh Show.

If you want to create a separate article for ALL blogosphere jargon, then you could merge this article into that. Until then, keep it separate or merge with the Tom Friedman article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Cy Guy (talk • contribs) 14:18, 19 March 2007 (UTC).

Don't merge -- it must be accessable to people with no interest in or familiarity with blogging

I just arrived at the "Friedman Unit" page via a link from Crooks and Liars --- it makes no sense for me to go to some entry nested under Atrios, or even Tom Friedman... This is a global unit of measure, never before defined for general usage. It should have its own entry, with related link-to Tom Friedman. Has nothing to do with Atrios, even if he happened to be the first one who coined the term. That's meta data and only intelligible to "insiders" of the blogosohere. This word should be understandable completely outside of any context of "blogging" -- which is still not a tool of mainstream America. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Quicksite (talk • contribs) 22:00, 19 March 2007 (UTC).

Do NOT Merge (term has a life of its own)

I've seen this term on dozens of blogs. It clearly has a meaning separate from both its author and its original subject. It belongs in its own entry. Froomkin 22:29, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Why is there any debate about this?

The term "Friedman Unit" has obviously come into widespread usage. This debate seems to hinge on some obscure ideological ax-grinding. Why cripple wikipedia by kow-towing to the unhinged? --Sam Thornton 23:19, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm starting to suspect Sockpuppetry and/or POV on behalf of those advocating merger or AfD of FU

Something's not adding up. Why did the same person who "proposed" merger on FU add the lengthy section on it here, in a section called "Recurring Content," when in fact Duncan Black (Atrios) himself mentions the phrase at most a half-dozen times? This section is oddly out-of-place in a page about Duncan Black. Eugene Banks 08:43, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

If you'd bothered to pay the slightest attention to the edit summaries at the time you'd see that this was part of a merge I carried out, which was later only partially reverted by its detractors. It's not my fault that the blogswarm who are defending the separation as part of a misguided attempt to use Wikipedia as a political platform aren't capable of properly undoing merges.

I'm also getting increasingly tired of being randomly accused of keeping sockpuppet accounts, or editing with a POV whenever I edit anything slightly controversial. Kindly refrain from ever doing that again unless you have firm evidence. It's this kind of idiocy (along with Wikipedia's broken governance model) which is seriously reducing my interest in contributing in future. Chris Cunningham 11:29, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Atrios picture

Atrios wrote on his blog (readership 100k+) "Open Thread while I edit my Wikipedia to include more fight scenes," so joke edits can be expected for a while. I notice that his picture has been replaced with a picture of Bruce Lee or someone..

Recurring Content

does anyone else feel that the "holden gets a pony" paragraph is poorly written in terms of its references to Holden. It makes no mention of who he is —Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.140.237.106 (talk) 19:54, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Atrios/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

== Biography assessment rating comment == WikiProject Biography Assessment Drive Active politician tag re definition: "A person who galvanizes public opinion". The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- Yamara 09:00, 18 March 2007 (UTC) == == The Friedman unit entry is crucial, & not just because of Friedman. The entry provides a quick reference point to the geniuses that brought us this war. Now that we are starting on the fifth year of the war, it is most helpful to have that list of people who said "six months" four years ago.71.233.111.230 23:02, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Last edited at 09:00, 18 March 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 08:33, 29 April 2016 (UTC)