Talk:Hillary Victory Fund

88 percent

"88 percent of it was transferred back to the national committee after several days the Clinton staff member who leads the Fund"

Not sure what this is trying to say, but it seems like it's missing a word or two. Maybe "by"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.182.108.143 (talk) 17:30, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Potential sources

• http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/hillary-clinton-committee-raised-33-million-222044

czar 10:59, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Figures from the primaries

First time editing wikipedia, sorry if this is totally wrong, but I have a concern about the politico article being sourced - as it's written before the primaries ended, the statement that "less than 1 percent of the $61 million raised by that effort has stayed in the state parties’ coffers" is extremely misleading (it would be insanely unethical to have money be transferred to downballot candidates before their primaries are over, so obviously when the article was written (early May) it hadn't happened yet). It's also outdated, since one could just look on opensecrets and see that far more than 1% of the HVF's money went to state parties. Could this source be removed or at least open for discussion? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.97.189.239 (talk) 12:27, 21 March 2017‎ (UTC)

I've added a date qualifier. Do you have a reliable, secondary source on the distribution post-primaries? czar 20:35, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi, me again - sorry I still don't quite know how to edit wikipedia nicely - here's the opensecrets link (https://www.opensecrets.org/jfc/expenditures.php?id=C00586537&cycle=2016) showing expenditures towards state parties clearly exceeding 1% of its budget (it only shows the top 10, but you can search for each state party's donation amounts elsewhere on the site). One could check the Obama Victory Fund's expenditures from 2012 to show that the amounts are comparable aside from the top few states. Furthermore I don't think it's quite enough to just add the date as a qualifier since it's still misleading - the point is that a report from May can't say anything definitive about funding of state parties in the general election which was 6 months later. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.97.189.239 (talk) 05:24, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

No worries (and you can sign your posts with four tildes). I saw you mention OpenSecrets last time but do you have a reliable, secondary source? As a tertiary source, WP paraphrases reliable, secondary sources (Politico, NYT, The Economist, etc.) instead of providing our own original interpretation. czar 05:38, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure what other sources even exist, honestly. This isn't really my area of expertise. I've never heard anyone impeach opensecrets' credibility though. The wikipedia article on it is a little short so if there are controversies I'm unaware of, then sorry. However, I'd still argue opensecrets is a more reliable source since it's up to date. The politico article is almost a year old and attempts to draw conclusions about an election that occurred two months ago - isn't that a red flag?--172.97.189.239 (talk) 18:38, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

WP, as a tertiary source, reports what reliable, secondary sources say so that its editors' (our) credibility does not need to be challenged. If the numbers are outdated, we can say what time period they're from (as it does), but to interpret what OpenSecrets does not say explicitly would be original research on our part. czar 20:46, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Sorry if I come off as argumentative, but I still find it misleading and deleterious to the quality of the article as a whole even if it says the date the source is from. The average person reading that would conclude "the HVF didn't distribute a lot of money to state parties" - it's extremely deceptive because many of the primary elections hadn't finished yet (for example, Florida's: https://results.elections.myflorida.com/Index.asp?ElectionDate=8/30/2016&DATAMODE=). The statement "A May 2016 analysis by Politico found that funds provided to the state parties were often immediately transferred to the DNC" is about as meaningful as "Analysis from the year 534 BCE found that funds provided to the state parties were often immediately transferred to the DNC". There's simply no mechanism by which to transfer funds towards downballot races at that point in the election cycle, so of course the money would not have been transferred yet. It shouldn't be mentioned at all in the article because at best it doesn't say anything meaningful, and at worst, it actively deceives readers. Also I'm unclear on how OpenSecrets doesn't explicitly contradict the article's claims - for example, it says "less than 1 percent of the $61 million raised by that effort has stayed in the state parties’ coffers.", yet they raised half a billion by the end of the election: https://www.opensecrets.org/jfc/summary.php?id=C00586537&cycle=2016, and in the top 10 expenditures (https://www.opensecrets.org/jfc/expenditures.php?id=C00586537&cycle=2016), you can see that the HVF raised $7368749 combined for Maine, Florida, and Wyoming alone, which is more than 1% of 500 million, and certainly more than 1% of 61 million. You don't have to use the opensecrets link in the article, but I think the politico article should be removed, because it's deceptive and reduces the clarity of the article. Furthermore, it oversimplifies a very complex situation (as you can see from our discussion about it!)172.97.189.239 (talk) 14:40, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

I understand what you're saying, but Wikipedia presents what reliable, secondary sources say. (You might appreciate this article on verifiability over truth.) In a crude way, this means that when no source discusses the post-primaries fund distribution, that information isn't worth mentioning. I already explained why it would be original research to interpret OpenSecrets' figures, and why we instead would paraphrase a claim a reliable, vetted authority has made about them. I've rephrased the sentence to be less precise as an accommodation, but even better would be a little article expansion from post-election sources, if any exists. czar 18:57, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the informative reply; I think the edit you made is better. I do have another question though - you said "when no source discusses the post-primaries fund distribution, that information isn't worth mentioning", but are decisions ever made about what is and isn't worth mentioning based on considerations other than the lack of, or reliability of sources? For example, I don't see how the distribution of funds during the primary is worth mentioning at all or how it adds to the article. I know I've taken up a lot of your time already but this part is still unclear to me.172.97.189.239 (talk) 18:44, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Sure—there are plenty of times a primary source will be used as long as it's a non-contentious claim a source makes about itself, but that isn't the case here. As for whether the distribution during the primaries bears mentioning at all, that point was the headline of the Politico piece ("Clinton fundraising leaves little for state parties"), so if we follow what the sources find important, it's very noteworthy. To your larger point, yes, we do also bear the weaknesses of our sources, but not sure how we can avoid that as a tertiary source without either using less reliable publications or becoming less rigorous ourselves (by letting anonymous editors post their original research). I still find it hard to believe that there has been no postmortem of the HVF. I haven't searched myself, but I imagine it's out there, and that would make most of this moot czar 00:44, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Alright, thanks! If I contribute more to this it will be after doing a little more research.172.97.213.137 (talk) 19:39, 4 April 2017 (UTC)