Talk:John McCain

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Frequently asked questions

Q1:Why does this article cover up the fact that McCain has called Asians "gooks" and made other similar remarks?

A1:Nothing is being covered up. This article is written according to summary style which requires that material in other articles is only summarized here in this article. The information about McCain's use of the term "gook" is discussed in the articles on John McCain 2000 presidential campaign and Cultural and political image of John McCain. Many other controversial remarks by McCain are detailed in the latter article. The "gook" comment was narrowly used by McCain with reference to the specific people who captured and then tortured him in Vietnam; McCain stopped using the term in 2000, and many Asians did not mind him narrowly using the term in the way he did. Singling out this remark for inclusion in this article would give it undue weight, and providing the necessary background and context would also take up too much space in this article. This issue was previously discussed in March, May, and June of 2008.

Q2: Where is X? It is a well-known development in McCain's life.

A2: As stated above, this article uses summary style; think of it as an executive summary of McCain. Much more information about McCain's life, military career, political career, and persona is included in the McCain biographical subarticles shown in the navigational box: Early life and military career of John McCain, House and Senate career of John McCain, 1982–1999, John McCain 2000 presidential campaign, Senate career of John McCain, 2001–present, John McCain 2008 presidential campaign, and Cultural and political image of John McCain.

Q3: Which of these is the subarticle that lists his controversies?

A3: None of them. All such material (such as his role in the Keating Five, for example) is included in the normal biographical sections they occur in, in this article and in the various subarticles. Having a separate "controversies" or "criticisms" article or section is considered a violation of WP:NPOV, WP:Content forking, and WP:Criticism. A special effort was undertaken to rid all 2008 presidential candidates' articles of such treatment — see here.

Q4: This article is not neutral! It's biased {for, against} him! It reads like it was written by {his PR team, Democratic hatchet men}!

A4: Complaints of bias are taken seriously, but must be accompanied by very specific areas of concern or suggestions for change. Vague, general statements such as these are of no help to editors; we can't read your mind.

Q5: The section on his presidential campaign leaves out important developments. What gives?

A5: The main article's presidential campaign section is intentionally brief. The subarticle John McCain 2008 presidential campaign has a much fuller treatment of the campaign and that is where most new additions should go.

Q6: Something in the lead (introductory) section doesn't have a footnote. I'm going to put a {{fact}} tag on it right now.

A6: This article (like many others) uses the approach that there are no citations in the lead section, because everything in the lead is also found in the body of the article along with its citation.

John McCain is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on November 4, 2008.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
December 6, 2006	WikiProject peer review	Reviewed
March 5, 2008	Featured article candidate	Not promoted
April 18, 2008	Good article nominee	Listed
May 22, 2008	Peer review	Reviewed
July 3, 2008	Good article reassessment	Kept
August 18, 2008	Featured article candidate	Promoted
November 4, 2008	Today's featured article	Main Page
News items involving this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "In the news" column on August 26, 2018, and November 5, 2008.
A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on March 14, 2020.
Current status: Featured article

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This article has been mentioned by multiple media organizations:

Alison Stewart, Rachel Martin (2008-04-03). "'Round the Clock: Obama, Clinton Wiki-Warfare". Bryant Park Project, NPR.
Tom Foreman (2008-04-12). "Wikipedia Wars". This Week..., CNN.
John J. Miller (2008-04-21). "Liberal Web". National Review.
Kelly Heyboer (2008-05-28). "Hillary Clinton's Wikipedia watchdog". The Star-Ledger.
Paul Murnane (2008-05-28). "one of two pieces aired". WCBS Newsradio 880.
Brian Krebs (2008-08-29). "Wikipedia Edits Forecast Vice Presidential Picks". The Washington Post.
Noam Cohen (2008-11-05). "Wikipedia Enters the Fray". The New York Times.
Brian Heater (2008-11-06). "Obama Gets a Landslide of Wikipedia Edits". PC Magazine.
Noam Cohen (2008-11-09). "Updating a Reference Site on the Fly". The New York Times.
(none) (August 17, 2009). "The 50 most-viewed Wikipedia articles in 2009 and 2008". The Daily Telegraph.

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This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

September 11 attacks were in 2001 not 2008

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Change "After the September 11 attacks in 2008, McCain supported Bush" to "After the September 11 attacks in 2001, McCain supported Bush" Poiuz (talk) 09:21, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Done LizardJr8 (talk) 17:36, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Instead of vague political ideology, his stances on subjects matters more

In 'political positions', the entire first paragraph is discussing how liberal or conservative he was, but it says nothing about his actual beliefs in policy. Instead, I suggest deleting most of that paragraph and adding info on his public viewpoints on contentious topics. CS012831 (talk) 22:49, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]