Talk:Bus Riders Union (Los Angeles)

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The page is incomplete and I wonder how it can ever reflect the very diveregnt views of the organization. I have been an acivist on these issues and had a front row seat to the BRU and its activities. It has done some good but its own p.r. doesn't always tell the whole story or the questionable aspects and deceptiveness that underlie it.Dgabbard (talk) 18:40, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I restored some language about the fare hearing startegy and links to a website I helped research providing a basis for alternative perspectives. I hope BRU supporters understand a santized entry in the long run actually hurts the group's credibility. Dgabbard (talk) 18:04, 6 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

planned edits; avoiding COI issues

Hello. I'm affiliated with the Bus Riders Union (BRU). I am planning to update and improve this article to meet wikipedia standards (NPOV, RS). I have studied Wikipedia's core principles and concepts and will do my best to respect and uphold them, especially COI and NPOV given my affiliation with the organization. I welcome any and all feedback or guidance from experienced editors on this matter.

It seems the priorities for editing this article are:

needs citations--there is plenty of reliable source material out there (many scholarly books, mainstream print news coverage)
remove non-RSes--www.crmvet.org, www.transit-insiders.org, A New Vision of Urban Transportation (not a peer-reviewed publication)
correct factual errors e.g. BRU is not led by Eric Mann or any single person but by a Planning Committee (bylaws)
copyediting

To all the past writers/editors of this article, thank you for all your work. I look forward to working with you. Jay1955 (talk) 12:07, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

adding Criticism, Controversy sections

Hello tedder, thanks for getting involved, glad to have an admin's expertise. I agree that there needs to be critical balance but I don’t think an EL is the best way. There are reliably-sourced, published criticisms that should be reflected in the main body of the article. So I have taken RSes cited at the EL, added another, and incorporated them into a new “criticism” section in the main body. I have also added a "Controversy" subsection under "Consent Decree" and added one cite for that and will fill in more when I get more time.

One challenge this article has is weighting/balance of views. The scholarly literature is virtually all positive on BRU (I've barely tapped the number of possible cites). Similar for national and international media (though here you will find some national opinions against consent decree, i think). Locally, the picture is different. The consent decree has been the subject of sustained debate among local columnists and news outlets. But from what I've seen so far, local critics mostly criticize the consent decree (good for the county? bad for the county?), and only a small minority of articles actually criticize the BRU as an organization. This is from my reading 50+ articles, opeds, columns, skimming more, and scanning many more by title alone.

So given this distribution of RS POVs how much space/weight should be given to criticism of consent decree, criticism of bru? Is what I've done in this round of edits enough, is it too much? Jay1955 (talk) 17:23, 14 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Generally an EL is used before sections are added to the article. You've fixed that by writing out the article- at a glance, it looks great. I really appreciate the "criticism" section, as well as the stubbed "controversy" section. tedder (talk) 17:29, 14 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree, actually - an opposing viewpoint is necessary to show the broad based criticism of the BRU. The criticism and controversy section needs to be a lot bigger. I've started by readding the controversy in the Jewish community when the BRU stated its support for Palestine. Some of the stuff is petty (not letting someone join), but other information, such as the 990 forms, as well as agency criticism, should be readded. Calwatch (talk) 03:34, 4 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Organization Info/Leadership

Perhaps someone in-the-know could add some basic stuff like: Who is the president/leadership? Where are they located? How are they funded? How many members do they have? Website info, etc. The only link is to another general organised labor organization which has some very stale data on this group.I can find no current website or organization information for them online and wonder if the group still exists. If not, what happened? Lexlex (talk) 07:59, 11 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]