Talk:Don Cunningham/Archive 1

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Reverted IP edits

I've reverted a handful of recent edits by an IP user that I believe, whether willfully or unintentionally, violate WP:NOR and WP:NPOV, as well as WP:RS and WP:V, and which appears to be editorial commentary about Cunningham and development in the Lehigh Valley rather than neutral, verifiable, encyclopedic content. For example, the edits claimed the criteria used by Site Selection in identifying fastest-growing areas are "new corporate buildings constructed with a large footprint, and not necessarily whether many new or better jobs result", but none of the sources cited say this. Likewise, the edits attribute directly to Cunningham's leadership the fact that "the majority of these large-scale buildings have been warehouses and distribution centers built on cheap land, much of it farmland, near interstate highways". While some of the cited sources discuss the increase in warehouses and distribution centers in the Lehigh Valley, none of them say 1) the majority of these specific buildings fall within this category, 2) that Cunningham himself is advocating for this type of development, or 3) that this makes up the majority of Site Selection's criteria. Other additions like "few areas in the country that have seen as many new warehouses" and "typically generate far fewer and generally lower wage jobs than manufacturing or office space" are stated by these specific sources, not do they pertain to Cunningham directly, and apepar to be editorailizing against a specific type of development, which violates WP:NPOV. Other additions, such as "The profusion of warehouses and with them tractor trailer traffic has been attributed to a peculiarity of Pennsylvania law targetted by Cunningham" and "due to the many hundreds of new trans-shipping warehouses Cunningham fostered has turned daily life for residents into something closer to a living nightmare" are likewise not sourced, are editorial language in violation of WP:NPOV and WP:WEASEL, and frankly are very problematic because they are potentially libelous statements that risk violating WP:BLP. The entire last paragraph added by the user (which began with "Meanwhile the vast increase in tractor trailer traffic on highways and surface roads...") has nothing to do with Cunningham at all, is even more clearly in violation of WP:NPOV, WP:WEASEL and WP:SOAPBOX, and the cited soures only cover a small portion of the added text. The user also removed content that was properly cited, such as the reference to "4.9 percent more jobs by the end of 2016 than the region had before the recession began", and the removal seems to be further proof of advocating for a specific point of view. This is an encyclopedic article about a living person, not a WP:SOAPBOX for an individual to condemn a specific style of development. I don't think any reasonable person could say IP additions using terms like "turned daily life for residents into something closer to a living nightmare" (emphasis added) is neutral or encyclopedic in any way. — Hunter Kahn 18:20, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

You don't know what you're talking about, and many of your statements here are simply false. The news reports I cited back up these statements, and some of the ones you object most strongly to are nearly verbatim quotations drawn from those news articles. The nature of "Site Selection"'s criteria are documented by my cites, and it would be simple to provide further ones to back them up...or you could just look into the question before deleting material that explains what their metrics are. These are the stated criteria: "Scores are awarded based on six criteria: total projects, total investment associated with those projects and jobs associated with those projects. The remaining three criteria represent a per capita calculation of those same metrics." https://siteselection.com/issues/2019/may/2019-mac-conway-awards.cfm

"Site Selection magazine is an internationally circulated business publication covering corporate real estate and economic development." Its criteria is the largely about building large new buildings, only secondarily about creating new jobs. You are the one who, without proof, portrayed their metric as one of "economic development" and similarly vague/meaningless descriptors that were meant to convey approbation. Again, there is zero question that the vast majority of new corporate buildings in the Lehigh Valley under Cunningham have been warehouses vel sim. The citations I provided say so, and only you (as far as I can see) are claiming that is not true. You have no standing to remove material just because it does not reflect positively on Cunningham's leadership. Your own flowery additions to this page strongly suggest that you intend to fluff his reputation to the absolute maximum possible. I am reverting your deletions because the material is factual and amply documented. If you have objections to individual phrases or want to quibble about particular facts, then raise those individually. Don't delete masses of information that you don't particularly want to have others know about. Also, bone up on what "slander" is. As for the "living nightmare", that is backed up by several of the news reports I cited - which quote residents saying that life has become nightmarish from all the truck traffic, or show tractor trailers blocking small local roads, or (in one cite) provide pictures and descriptions of the most "god-awful" sites of traffic congestion in the Lehigh Valley. Why in the world do you think so many local town councils and the LV Planning Commission and PennDOT are brainstorming constantly about blocking new warehouse construction and coping with the, yes, nightmarish traffic conditions that have sprung up since corporations began using PA zoning requirements to crack open rural townships to new warehouse development? Is it all pure imagination on the part of local residents, officials, and journalists?

  • I do not get the impression from your tone that you are interested in a collaborative or productive discussion geared at reaching a WP:CONSENSUS, but I will attempt to respond to some of your non-rhetoric points above, and will hold off any reverting anything further for the sake of avoiding edit wars. First of all, you defend describing Site Selection criteria as "emphasiz(ing) the number of new corporate buildings constructed with a large footprint, and not necessarily whether many new or better jobs result" by linking to this site, which does not say this at all. In fact, the very set of criteria that you point to seems to contradict your point, since it explicitly says "jobs associated with those projects" is a factor. You also say simply because the magazine covers "corporate real estate" that that automatically means it is focused "only on large buildings", which is an inference on your part in violation of WP:OR, and a matter of subjective opinion by you in violation of WP:NPOV. The source simply does not back up the language you are inserting, which is consistent with most if not all of your edits. Additionally, you say there is "zero question that the vast majority of new corporate buildings in the Lehigh Valley under Cunningham have been warehouses vel sim", but again your own sources do not back this up. Your sources have indicated there is growth in warehouses, but they do not indicate this is the majority of new growth, nor do they attribute this specific type of growth to Cunningham, nor do they say that Cunningham has advocated for this specific type of growth. You are once again inferring things that are not explicitly stated. Finally, your defense of the "living nightmare" phrase is ludicrous and makes transparent your personal biases and improper motives in making these edits. Nowhere in these sources is the phrase "living nightmare" used; you are not quoting anybody as saying that, but rather adding this extremely provocative WP:WEASEL term into an article that is supposed to be written with an encyclopedic prose. Just because in your subjective opinion you think the sources you are citing show that this place is a "living nightmare" doesn't mean you can insert that editorialization into an encyclopedia article. you are willfully and blatantly in violation of WP:NPOV, WP:OR, WP:WEASEL and a score of other Wikipedia policies. — Hunter Kahn 19:37, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
So, before I start assembling dozens of news articles and all the planning documents from Cunningham going all the way back to when he was hired, how many sources is sufficient to prove the accuracy of any/all the things you claim are not true? How many quotations of local residents frustrated by these warehouses; how many reports about people killed, buildings and roads damaged, communities torn apart by the out of control trucks; how many different town councils fighting and failing to stop warehouse development; how many disputes over truck traffic ruining small towns or causing congestion/accidents on the highways; how many planning committees that have sprung up to address the "crisis" that is "now"? Give me a metric of what will satisfy you that your own privileged point of view is not in fact correct or the only perspective worth mentioning regarding Cunningham's plan to pave large swathes of small towns in the Lehigh Valley? As for your quibbling over the interpretation of Site Selection's criteria, you are simply wrong. Some of the cited sources state explicitly that SS only counts new buildings larger than a certain square footage, so I don't get how you think you have proven I'm making that up. Anyway, 4 of the 6 criteria measure the number of new (yes, large) buildings constructed and their expense; only 2 of the 6 measure jobs, and furthermore they measure any and all jobs associated with those new buildings. They do not measure new jobs in the region; it's a question of how many jobs in the region can be associated with those new buildings. With warehouses, all of the truckers coming and going are potentially part of that job count, as are part time/temporary jobs during e.g. Christmas season. For another example of how misleading SS's job numbers are, when a corporation decided to build a new building and left an old one, it counted all the jobs associated with that new building **as if they were a measure of economic development** rather than just a different headquarters. So it is perfectly accurate to say that Site Selection emphasizes building new buildings more than new/better jobs. And the fact that Cunningham's PR shop keeps blasting out these Site Selection survey results is the clearest possible indication that what his plan is aiming for is in fact exactly what I describe, building large numbers of new buildings. If Cunningham's plan were about creating better paying jobs, he would instead be talking up statistics that show the average rate of pay was going up (hint: that appears not to be happening to any appreciable degree in the Lehigh Valley). Instead he's bragging that a corporate real estate magazine says that corporate real estate is a hot commodity in LV. FWIW, I'll believe that you don't want to engage in edit warring if you refrain in the future from starting an edit war.
  • It's not a matter of a certain number of stories about warehouses; you need to provide sources that explicitly state that an increase in warehouses can be attributed to Don Cunningham, and/or that Don Cunningham has actively targeted warehouses when attracting development. You've so far provided no articles that do this. (And frankly, your highly rhetoric language in your responses in here only further reinforce to me that you're trying to push a specific point of view here.) As for the Site Selection's criteria, would you care to copy-and-paste the exact sentence that says they only accept large footprint buildings or huge warehouses? Your mere rebuttal that they only "count new buildings larger than a certain square footage" doesn't cut it because I believe the cut-off is something like 20,000 SF, which is hardly excluding projects to large-footprint buildings. Regardless of any of this, you are trying to make a point in this article that the Site Selection criteria is flawed or problematic. This is not how Wikipedia works; you are violating WP:OR, WP:NPOV, WP:SOAPBOX and various other policies. If you can find a reliable source that criticizes the criteria in the context of the article subject, then cite that, and attribute the claim to the person who said it. But it's not appropriate for you to try to make that point yourself. Wikipedia is not your soapbox. — Hunter Kahn 01:48, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
So much for not edit warring, eh? You go and delete everything I posted on your own say so because....why? Who are you to decide? You can't even get the issues straight. I'm not saying SS's criteria are flawed, I'm saying they are not accurately described as simply "economic development"; they're primarily about building large buildings. How is that hard to understand? It is directly relevant to Cunningham's push to justify the explosion in warehouses under his tenure. As for his involvement in that process, I would ask you to stop playing dumb. The explosion began after Cunningham was hired, and he has many times over made excuses for the problems created by it and chastised those who criticize or complain. Since you want sources linking him to it, here are 3 in which Cunningham himself makes the case for people having to tolerate warehouses and trucks ruining their lives. Is this good enough to prove the point, or are you going to dig in your heels further and force me to spend hours proving over and over again what everybody already knows: that Cunningham is a big booster of warehouses.

https://lehighvalley.org/don-cunningham-lehigh-valley-center-e-commerce-explosion/ https://lehighvalley.org/don-cunningham-changing-world-retail/ https://www.mcall.com/business/mc-biz-cunningham-big-tech-20190115-story.html In the last of these, Cunningham has the nerve to argue that anybody who buys anything on line has lost the right to complain about warehouses and truck traffic. But he's not at all sensitive on the issue, is he? Not to judge by any of the additions to his page that you yourself have made...or have allowed anybody else to make. To underline the degree to which you're just being contrarian, you are now denying that 20,000 square foot buildings can be described as having a large footprint. That is the metric SS uses, and it means that their criteria have no interest in measuring the construction that small scale businesses engage in. 20,000 sq. ft. is a measurement of corporate building, not all business construction per se, and it is the perfect metric to measure Cunningham's success in getting huge numbers of warehouses built.

Hunter, who seems to be a flack for Cunningham, is back to his edit warring - deleting reams of factual information backed up by citations, just because he doesn't want the *effects* of Cunningham's economic development policies mentioned alongside all the self-described "successes" that Cunningham likes to brag about. The effects of his warehousing push is evident on highway maps Monday through Friday: miles of stalled traffic on both Routes 78 and 22, the only major highways we have, for hours at a time every morning and every evening. That is because the highways are now choked with tens of thousands of tractor trailors that they were not designed for. Hunter seeks to exclude any discussion of that effect, just as Cunningham publicly dodges complaints about it. That is the "neutral" point of view Hunter claims to advance.

Attempt at compromise

As previous talk page discussion on this page indicates, I believe the user who keeps editing this page has a negative perception of Don Cunningham (nor do I think he or she would deny it) and that their edits are in volition of WP:NPOV and WP:WEASEL. Rather than revert it yet again, I’d attempt a compromise and keep some of the substance of their edits intact. Below is what I did:

  • Previously the user wrote that the Site Selection criteria "emphasize the number of new corporate buildings constructed with a large footprint, and not necessarily whether many new or better jobs result”. This is not entirely accurate (even the source says new jobs are a consideration) and I believe is a non-POV characterization of the criteria, so instead I’ve added a citation quoting the exact criteria word for word, so it can’t be mischaracterized either way.
  • The user added a great deal about warehousing in Lehigh Valley and characterized Cunningham as specifically seeking that type of development. While it is certainly true that the warehousing sector in the Lehigh Valley has seen considerable growth, the sources cited do not say it is the “majority’ of new economic development in the region (as the user claims), not do the sources say Cunningham has specifically sought this type of development. (In fact, the primary source discussing warehousing growth does not even MENTION Cunningham. And Cunningham’s organization’s website does not list it as a target sector, indicating he is focusing on other sectors, and that the warehousing growth is market-based and taking place without his influence). As a result, I’ve scaled back much of this language (a lot of it I believe was a WP:SOAPBOX essay against warehousing and not directly related to Cunningham), but I HAVE left in the fact that the region has seen a great deal of warehousing growth, the fact that it was drawn concerns and criticism about truck traffic, and the fact that Cunningham has defended some types of logistics growth.
  • I’ve removed the bit about “a peculiarity of Pennsylvania law targetted by Cunningham” because there is absolutely nothing in the sources cited that say he has done this.
  • I’ve also removed the claim that most post-Recession job growth in the Lehigh Valley were low-paying jobs, since again the source does not say this.

I hope that if there is continued disagreement, rather than the user just reverting the edits again, we can try to sort it out here and reach a middle ground... — Hunter Kahn 23:56, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

You delete a bunch of stuff, and then say you want to have a discussion? That's not how discussions work. If you really wanted to find out the truth about this matter, and then procede to editing the page to reflect established facts, then you would start with discussion first. I'm going to revert your reversion. Then I'll be happy to discuss facts with you. I notice that you deleted huge amounts of information which I've documented, as well as entire aspects of the problems created by the explosion of warehouses. Where exactly did you leave room for the complaints about out of control traffic and traffic accidents? I see zero admission in your version that any such genuine problems exist. This accords with my observation that you appear to have devoted yourself for a long time to a project of fluffing Cunnigham's reputation; you also seem to want to suppress or deflect the very criticisms of his work that are routinely discussed among residents of the LV. I have never seen you add anything to this page that could be construed as critical of Cunningham's actions. It's only praise, and citations are mostly Cunningham's PR blurbs or puff pieces by industry insiders scratching his back.

As regards specific statements of yours here: (1) My statement about Site Selection is accurate. I never denied that they take other facts like the number of jobs into account; I said that the main factor is building new buildings of a significant size. That is what the sum total of what they say about their criteria indicates. You claim that you included a verbatim quotation what SS says about it's criteria, but I see no such quotation. (2) Good luck convincing anybody from the LV that Cunningham is not deeply immersed in the sudden explosion of warehouses here, which began around 2013. His own prospectus from 2013 (which you cite) states that before he took over the LVEDC, the free land near highway exits had seen development for housing and for businesses - he doesn't say a word however about warehouses, because that didn't begin until after Cunningham took charge of LVEDC. Furthermore, a few times per year Cunningham publishes op-eds in the local media DENOUNCING his critics, specifically defending the increased tractor trailer traffic that clogs our highways and going so far as to tell his critics that they need to shut up because they too buy things that pass through the infamous trans-shipment warehouses. What kind of a politician tells the public that their job is to shut up and take whatever the politicians give them? I think it's pretty damned clear - that's a politician who feels the heat. All you have to do is look at the traffic flow maps during rush hour to figure out what that heat is all about. (3) Cunningham's prospectus describes his strategy as making his office a clearinghouse for information about local laws and conditions to help developers navigate the process of setting up new properties in the LV. There is no way that corporations from all over the US and beyond each independently figured out that PA law backs local townships into a corner with regard to zoning regulation. So again, it would be deliberately naive to assume that Cunningham didn't facilitate the very exploitation that he keeps defending in the media. (4) Warehousing jobs are classic examples of lower paying jobs. It ought to be up to you to find evidence that in the LV they are actually higher paying jobs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.86.139.240 (talk) 04:03, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

No, you didn't try to reason. You deleted material and then sought to have your way before offering to discuss what you hadn't deleted. That's not "compromise" by any normal definition. I deleted your deletions and offered to discuss the matter in its entirety - which you rejected, by the sleazy method of bringing in somebody else to prevent me from making further edits and then immediately deleting every single thing I've added to the page. This is a demonstration of your actual willingness to "compromise". Your own edits are in violation of WP:NPOV, as I have said repeatedly. Nothing you have contributed to Cunningham's page shows the slightest critical perspective on him or his actions; it is instead entirely flattering. Whatever you may claim about my additions, they bring a critical perspective to the evidence that your contributions lack. So, stop pretending that you are free from bias. You would not be fighting for months to delete information that is less than flattering about Cunningham's tenure unless you had a very strong bias in the matter. As for WP:LIBEL, what a preposterous thing to allege. It shows that you yourself are a master of WP:WEASEL. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.86.135.164 (talk) 05:23, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
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