A fact from Sarah Ashton-Cirillo appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 29 September 2022 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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The result was: promoted by RoySmith (talk) 12:44, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Overall: Well, it looks like you folks know what you are doing; little surprise there. I have a preference for the original hook since it gives more background, although ALT1 is fine, too. –LordPickleII (talk) 17:29, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 1 September 2023[edit]
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This page contains paragraphs of unusual content for Wikipedia. Officials at a similar level in various governments would not even have a Wikipedia page let alone details regarding where they currently live, & an accounting of minor life experiences. Are there other Ukraine spokespeople with a similar level of detail on Wikipedia, or do any of them even have a Wikipedia page? The tone comes off to the reader as a dedicated fan page, & the edit history is dominated by a single user. This does not read as an encyclopedia entry. Dlobr (talk) 01:04, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Dlobr, there aren't that many Ukrainian spokespeople that garner this much media attention – particularly not people who were also notable under prior careers before this ever showed up on the radar. Could you point to a specific bit of text that you feel is problematic? theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 01:47, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
group that would later play a role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol—to a rally in front of the Clark County election department, part of nationwide efforts to overturn Joe Biden's victory. The day after the election, Ashton-Cirillo received a message from the vice president of McShane LLC, a firm hired by the Republican Party to investigate electoral fraud. In the message, given to the Post in 2021, the McShane vice president said that Republican Congressman Paul Gosar was planning a "Brooks Brothers Riot" in Arizona—referencing the 2000 demonstration by Republican staffers that contributed to George W. Bush's victory—and that Ashton-Cirillo should start planning something similar in Nevada; the McShane vice president said that they should "get the Proud Boys out". This led Ashton-Cirillo to contact a group of far-right activists, at least one of whom was a member of the Proud Boys. The proportion of those wearing Proud Boy colors in the crowd was relatively small, and the protest remained peaceful. Gosar denies having discussed any protests with the McShane vice president.
The Clark County Republican Party subsequently banned seven people from participating in Republican county affairs, citing racist and anti-Semitic texts disclosed to them by Ashton-Cirillo. One of those banned was a Proud Boy who Ashton-Cirillo had contacted when recruiting for the Clark County rally.
Blundo defense and Las Vegas City Council run (2021)
In early 2021, Ashton-Cirillo worked to coordinate the defense of Leo Blundo, a Republican Nye County official accused of unlawfully voting to give his own business CARES Act funds. Blundo denounced the accusations as "deep state, swamp behavior" and Ashton-Cirillo hailed him at a press conference as "an innocent man", to applause from the crowd. The Nevada attorney general's office declined to bring charges against Blundo.
By the spring of 2021, Ashton-Cirillo decided to run for Las Vegas City Council as a Democrat under the name Sarah Ashton (having changed her name to Sarah Ashton-Cirillo that March). She initially intended to run in the second ward against the Republican incumbent, Victoria Seaman. In June, she switched her candidacy to the sixth ward, challenging Michele Fiore, also a Republican. Ashton-Cirillo told the Current that she had provided the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) with "copious amounts" of correspondence between her and Fiore, as part of an ongoing FBI probe into Fiore's campaign finance spending.
Ashton-Cirillo withdrew from the race in October, saying she wished to focus on a political news portal she had created, Political.tips.
Political.tips and Chattah texts controversy (2022)
Chattah: Do you know that Aaron ford opposed ESA and converting schools in low income areas to charter schoolsAshton-Cirillo: Yes imaginary issues for an imaginary administrationChattah: This guy should be hanging from a fucking craneAshton-Cirillo: And fictional mediaChattah: He doesn't give a fuck about advancing opportunities in underserved communities.He's a bigger piece of shit than I imaginedIt's so shamefulHe's like the leader of Hamas—making tons of money while the People in Gaza are starving ----
Through Political.tips, Ashton-Cirillo reported on Nevada-related aspects of BlueLeaks, a set of law enforcement data released by Distributed Denial of Secrets in June 2020. In an article related to BlueLeaks, Ashton-Cirillo leaked texts with her former friend, Sigal Chattah, then a Republican candidate for Nevada Attorney General. In the leaked exchange, Chattah compared incumbent Aaron D. Ford to the leader of Hamas and said he "should be hanging from a fucking crane". Ford is Black, and some saw the remark as racist; Ford refused to debate Chattah, saying "she doesn't respect my dignity as a human". Ashton-Cirillo said that she does not think Chattah is racist nor intended to allude to Ford's race, and that her goal in releasing the texts had been to criticize Chattah's temperament. Ford ultimately won re-election; HuffPost highlighted the leaked texts as a major controversy in the race. Dlobr (talk) 21:44, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Dlobr: I don't quite follow. Did you copy-paste something by accident? -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she|they|xe) 04:39, 24 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that this entry is longer than it needs to be. Some content can be removed. For example, "A trans woman, she is thought to have been the first openly transgender war correspondent and the only transgender journalist covering the invasion." This is not particularly noteworthy and should not be presented as an inarguable fact. Masha Gessen is a trans journalist and was in Russia in February 2022, gave an interview on National Public Radio about the invasion, and later wrote an article for The New Yorker about their observations in Kharkiv. Gessen's articles about the invasion of Ukraine started getting published in The New Yorker beginning the day following the invasion.
Another line that stands out is El Pais referring to Sarah as "the most famous soldier in the Ukrainian military." Why is this included in the entry? She's most famous to who? Ukrainians? Americans? Subscribers to the Spanish periodical El Pais? (If it's the latter, it doesn't belong in the entry) That article was quite quite flattering to her with unsubstantiated remarks, such as "Since the beginning of the invasion, by her calculations, she has raised over $250,000 in humanitarian and military aid." Unsupported content from that article doesn't belong in a Wikipedia entry.
While true, there is other content in this entry that isn't noteworthy. For example, that someone "experienced significant harassment on Twitter" isn't important. Another example is the entire paragraph of "In mid–December 2022 Ashton-Cirillo met with members of the United States Congress, including Senator Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), as well as lawmakers' aides, activists, non-governmental organization employees, and members of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Invoking her background as an analyst, she argued on behalf of Ukraine that continued military aid to the country would have a high return on investment. She further invited members of the government to come to Ukraine and see the weapons in action." Without any concrete information about the outcome of this effort, it doesn't tell readers much. Lobbying for aid in Ukraine has been so constant (Asthon-Cirillo made another such plea in Washington DC in December 2023), that one instance of it doesn't deserve coverage in an overly long entry. Ajaxfriend (talk) 17:59, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If an encyclopedia informs us about the "other names" of a person, I expect this to include the first name given at birth - which certainly was not "Sarah". Or if this is illegal now under U.S. terms, please inform your foreign readers that you are not allowed to do it! 93.199.245.28 (talk) 11:35, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Please see MOS:DEADNAME, which makes clear that this name should not appear in the body of the article. Now, given that her deadname is not private information, per the final paragraph of that guideline it should maybe be included in the citation to Fair, Right, Just (|last=Cirillo |first=Michael |author-mask=Sarah Ashton-Cirillo (writing as Michael Cirillo)), but that provision of the guideline has been in flux so I've held off on doing anything. I don't have a strong opinion; if someone else wants to, it would not be contrary to the guideline. But using her deadname in the body itself, no, community consensus is clear on that. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she|they|xe) 19:33, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In a recent interview with Ukrainska Pravda, Sarah mentioned her experience as a writer covering the Syrian and Afghani refugee crisis in 2015-2016, which allowed her an opportunity to compare it to the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. Because the books she wrote are mentioned in the article, the name she had when they were published should be mentioned. Her writing in 2015-2016 was under the name Michael Cirillo. Her former name may be listed under "other names" but not in the body of the article. Ajaxfriend (talk) 04:29, 27 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it looks like you folks know what you are doing; little surprise there. I have a preference for the original hook since it gives more background, although ALT1 is fine, too. –LordPickleII (talk) 17:29, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
