Talk:Chaz Stevens

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by 97198 (talk) 08:36, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

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Chaz Stevens

• ... that Chaz Stevens (pictured) put up Festivus poles supporting gay pride at six mostly conservative US state capitols? Source: https://time.com/4160617/festivus-gay-poles/ "A man is erecting rainbow Festivus poles at state capitols across the U.S. and it’s all part of a (semi) organized plan to needle conservative America." https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/12/florida-man-puts-up-gay-pride-festivus-pole-in-conservative-capitols.html "This holiday season, as many as eight state capitols will be graced with a rainbow-festooned Festivus pole—a 6.5-foot-tall display crowned by a glittering disco ball. .... Stevens hopes to place his display in Republican-dominated states". That he succeeded in six is cited individually for each in the appropriate place in the article.

Gay pride Festivus pole at Nativity scene

• ALT1: ... that Chaz Stevens put up holiday season Festivus poles supporting gay pride (pictured) in six mostly conservative US state capitols? Source: Same source, but use this image:
• ALT2: ... that after Florida schools banned 54 math books, Chaz Stevens (pictured) petioned that they also ban the Bible? Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/04/26/1094740651/florida-man-asks-schools-to-ban-the-bible-following-the-states-efforts-to-remove "In petitions sent to public school superintendents across the state, Chaz Stevens asked the districts to "immediately remove the Bible from the classroom, library, and any instructional material" ... his ire was stoked after Florida lawmakers decided this month to ban 54 math books that were claimed to have incorporated topics such as critical race theory."
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Mackenzie Fierceton

Moved to mainspace by GRuban (talk). Self-nominated at 18:51, 14 July 2022 (UTC).

• New enough and long enough. QPQ present. This guy has done a whole lot of stuff! Note that the headshot is currently nominated for deletion as copyvio on Commons and should not be used; the pole image is, however, usable. The hook facts all check out and are neutral and interesting. Earwig does flag a few passages from the official bio, but almost all are organization names and I think possible copying from this page. No other issues I see. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 05:55, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Getting VRT release email for headshot as we speak. Er, write. --GRuban (talk) 22:38, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
    • @Sammi Brie: The headshot release has been confirmed, and the deletion tag has been removed from it. --GRuban (talk) 15:40, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
      • Updated the approval to reflect this. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 18:15, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion:

• Chaz-Stevens-1500x500.jpg

You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 10:52, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Chaz Stevens with Pole cap.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 13:22, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Domestic violence plea.

Information can be found on the Palm Beach County Clerk of Court website. Stevens’ middle name is “Richard.” https://appsgp.mypalmbeachclerk.com/eCaseView/search.aspx JT EOD (talk) 00:39, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

So, we need reliable secondary sources - books, newspapers, magazines, etc - for most facts, but especially for inherently controversial information about living persons, such as this. That's described under Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons#Public_figures. Firwst, it's debatable to which extent Stevens is a public figure, but a court website is definitely a primary source. If there are multiple newspapers covering the event prominently, we should put it in, but not otherwise. --GRuban (talk) 02:46, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

June templates

@Finell: In this edit, you added advert, puffery, and POV templates to the article, without any further discussion. Can you be specific as to the changes you believe need to be made? Thanks. --GRuban (talk) 18:06, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

@Finell: ? --GRuban (talk) 18:52, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

So, it's been three weeks, including two pings on article talk and one on user talk last week. I will remove the templates for now, if you want to discuss them, please ping me, and we will discuss them. --GRuban (talk) 21:13, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Edit request from subject

This is a slightly unusual edit request, since I don't have the COI, and can normally make edits to this page fine, but in this case the subject wants a small change that I wanted to get other editors' opinions on, since he does feel strongly about it. His initial request:

Can I ask to change

Occupation(s) Entrepreneur, activist

To

Occupation(s) Entrepreneur, social engineer

Activist just protests, gadflies irritate. I affect change.

Chaz Stevens

Our later discussion, collapsed for brevity

(From GRuban) Er ... and I say this as a "software engineer"! ... the word "engineer" has become overused enough to be almost meaningless. For example, a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_engineer is a trash collector.

Anyway, the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineer gives two options:

• Social engineering (political science), a means of influencing particular attitudes and social behaviors on a large scale
• Social engineering (security), obtaining confidential information by manipulating or deceiving people

Hopefully you don't mean the second one! The first one is more clear as to what it means "on a large scale" - Stalin-like. I don't think you've quite reached there - thank goodness! Given that, I'm afraid activist is more appropriate than social engineer. No offense.

(From Chaz Stevens)

An activist typically does not influence change. Hence the engineer. Most activists protest. Some litigate. Some go viral. But I weaponize all of it—legal challenges, satire, media spectacle—to expose hypocrisy and make bureaucracies eat themselves. I'm in the league with people like The Yes Men, TST, and Banksy.

I have been thinking about this A LOT. A LOT LOT.

I apply social engineering to power structures. I’m a policy hacker, using legal, cultural, and political mechanisms to force change. I don’t just fight the system—I reprogram it. I make institutions contradict themselves, tie them in legal knots, and force them to either adapt or collapse under their own hypocrisy.

I am down to Miami on Wednesday, to meet in Federal mediation, to tie Broward School's ears back. Or move forward to trial. And lose there, I appeal And lose there, I appeal to SCOTUS.

No offense in the slightest given, but you're completely and categorically wrong here.

Like comparing plastic cheese to Purple Moon Dust (oh so delicious).

(From GRuban)

I can ask other Wikipedia editors for their opinions if you want?

(From Chaz Stevens)

Please.

Above all else, I play by the rules and seek no special accommodation.

--GRuban (talk) 15:45, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

@GiantSnowman, Finell, JennyOz, and Neveselbert: Pinging editors who made more than one edit to the article in case they are interested in giving their opinions. --GRuban (talk) 16:00, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, what is a 'social engineer'? GiantSnowman 16:23, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

You can see Chaz's explanation in the collapsed section. (No, I don't know what Purple Moon Dust is ... but clearly I have to try it ...) --GRuban (talk) 16:40, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Fair enough. Sources describe him as an "activist", so we should reflect that. However, if we can verify that Mr Stevens has indeed made the request, I have no issues with adding a line to the lede saying something like "Stevens describes himself as a 'social engineer'". GiantSnowman 16:56, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

I'm going through COI edit reqs - closing this for now due to the lack of sources. If a source is found for @GiantSnowman's suggestion feel free to reopen (or implement). Agreed that the wikivoice description should follow sources, but no reason not to include a nod to his self description if it's verifiable. Rusalkii (talk) 01:53, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

Puffery

There's been some discussion of this article at Wikipedia:Teahouse#editing_own_page_by_proxy?. Coming from there, I've restored some tags related to puffery that seem appropriate to me. The article is overly detailed and has a somewhat promotional tone. The appropriateness of this much detail on various stunts, based on minor local news coverage, seems questionable. Bondegezou (talk) 13:51, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, Professor. Can you be more specific as to what sections of the article you object to? Most of the article is admittedly about stunts, that's what he does, but the coverage is non-trivial (every stunt we have a single sentence about gets full news articles devoted to it, not just casual mentions), and from reliable sources. If we were to exclude that coverage because it is from local news, we'd lose most of our articles about city and state officials, which we have thousands and thousands of. Stevens gets more coverage than most of them. --GRuban (talk) 14:30, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

If you can be specific about the promotional tone, though, I'd love to fix that. I'll tell you the same thing I told the new user who brought up that Teahouse issue: I want the article to be the best that it can be, and if you think it's an advertisement, I'd like to fix that. --GRuban (talk) 14:33, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

I have made several edits already. If you read an encyclopaedia article about a political activist, it will talk about what they did and why, but it won't go into the detail of individual stunts (like how many beer cans tall a pole was). Also, we need to present what Stevens did in a neutral tone, and not use language like, "He would now go after bigger game." Where possible, favour more significant publications and secondary news coverage rather than primary news coverage of individual stunts. You've been editing a long time, you know this stuff. Bondegezou (talk) 14:39, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

Oh nice, thanks for doing that. I think I can accept most of the first few at least.... --GRuban (talk) 14:48, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

Not this one though. You're removing two important details:

• one, that the Festivus pole isn't typically made of beer cans, Stevens made that part up - yet both the creator of the holiday and another expert approved it;
• and that Stevens doesn't actually drink beer any more, despite using beer cans for the pole.

By leaving those parts out, we are lying by omission, since otherwise a reader would naturally assume both that the Festivus pole is always made of beer cans, and that Stevens is a big fan of beer. Also these are both details cited to Mother Jones and Time Magazine, national, not local news, as you objected to above, they thought these were important details. I think they need to return. --GRuban (talk) 14:54, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

OK to the first, but why is it notable whether he drinks beer or not and whether he drank the beer in those particular beer cans or not? That's trivia. Bondegezou (talk) 16:56, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

OK, I can compromise there. --GRuban (talk) 18:13, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

Acceptable? --GRuban (talk) 18:43, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

I'd like to add here that the article also uses a lot of sources that only briefly mention Stevens, or don't mention him at all. I'll start cleaning up the source soon. Cortador (talk) 07:25, 4 April 2026 (UTC)