Talk:Enron scandal#Recent changes

Oil trader is now one of the richest people in the USA. He started a hedge fund with 'ill gotten' money from Enron. http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/110948/youngest-billionaires-in-america;_ylt=AjDHSW6ZANtGQoWnekbPcIpO7sMF;_ylu=X3oDMTFhNGY5bjNkBHBvcwMzBHNlYwNwZXJzb25hbEZpbmFuY2UEc2xrA2FtZXJpY2FzeW91bg--?mod=career-leadership

--Ericg33 (talk) 10:33, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

After working on the article for the last week, I have nominated the article at Good article nominations. Before the article is reviewed, try and give the article a copyedit to further improve the article. Good work to all who have contributed to the article in the past. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 20:58, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I have restored previous version the lead section[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Enron_scandal&diff=307552402&oldid=307432347] for the following reasons:

1. The lead was very long;
2. Most of it was unsourced;
3. It contained statements that are not entirely correct.

My view is that the lead should be sourced as much as possible. In my experience, articles that are not sourced tend to be magnets for original research, which in turn tends to be subject to "goldfish editing", by which I mean lots of editors make little nibbles at the text.--Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 13:23, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

:For an article of this length, guidelines recommend four paragraphs. I also tried to cover each topic as discussed in the article to provide an adequate lead. As it currently stands, it doesn't cover some of the topics in the article. Leads are not required to be sourced, although we could source the financial figures (readers can view the article and see the appropriate source(s) that cover the summary). In addition the statements that are cited in the current lead are taken verbatim from the source (one reason I reworded the lead, along with other areas in the article). I like sourcing in articles quite a bit (take a look at some of the articles I've worked on!), and the version I added can have sources added. If there are incorrect sentences, please point them out so we can correct them. I tried to ensure it was accurate, but if there were issues, that should be fixed in case anything in the article is also incorrect. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 21:31, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

::I am not saying the sourced version is particularly great, but I think it was a big improvement on the unsourced version that existed a few months ago[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Enron_scandal&diff=289539909&oldid=289506040]. The problem I would like to address are vague generalisations that cannot be proved or disproved, and replace them with more sourced information. As you will be aware from having edited the sources, there is a huge mass of information about the scandal, and making sense of it is dependent on getting the facts right and providing some form of backround or context to make these facts understandable. In my experience, relying on broad generalisation to provide information and context is a mistake, because they are magnets for original research; the opinions expressed are likely to be replaced over and over by other editors with different views from your own. The Enron Scandal is a very well sourced topic, so it should not be hard to find some good coverage for the lead, which is very important as it anchors the article to the content that follows.

::I have some questions about your lead, which I have broken down by paragraph as follows:

::# Enron had a strong start after being formed in 1985 by Kenneth Lay.

::# Several years later, when Jeffrey Skilling was hired, he instituted mark-to-market accounting and developed a staff of executives that would later bring the downfall of the company.

::# Along with Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow and other executives, the company used accounting loopholes, special purpose entities, and poor financial reporting to hide billions in debt from failed deals and projects.

::# Enron's audit committee failed to follow up on high-risk accounting issues and Anderson was pressured by the company to ignore accounting practices.

::# After Enron's stock price hit a high of $90 per share in mid-2000, it began to drop at which point Skilling resigned from the company.

::# Both internal and external analysis began to reveal the fraud that was being perpetuated by the company.

::# The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began an investigation, and Dynegy offered to purchase the company at a fire sale price.

::# The deal fell through and on December 2, 2001, Enron filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code.

::# In the aftermath of the scandal, many executives at Enron were indicted for a variety of charges and were later sentenced to prison.

::# Anderson was found guilty in a state court, but by the time the ruling was overturned at the U.S. Supreme Court, the company had lost the majority of its customers and had shut down.

::# Employees and shareholders received limited returns in lawsuits, despite losing billions in pensions and stock prices.

::My questions are as follows:

::# In what sense did Enron "have a strong start"? My understanding is that it would have been hard not to make money in the oil and gas industry, but whether Enron was as good as or better than its peers is a matter of speculation;

::# I think we should be able to find an some sort of source for this, e.g. [http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2002/1014/062_print.html Forbes], and provide some context too.

::# Such a strong statement of opninion needs to be sourced: strong claims require strong sourcing;

::# Likewise this needs to be sourced

::# I am not sure at what poing the preasure for Skilling to resign would have become overwhealming. The share price is only a symptom of what was going wrong - perhaps it was the restatement of earnings that blew away his credibility? Again, we need to nail this down with at least one source;

::# I am not sure if fraud had been established prior to the company's collapse: this may have been revealed later; again we need to find some sources to substantiate this;

::# Statements about the SEC investigation and the Dynegy takeover should be easy to source;

::# Likewise with the bankrupcy;

::# Likewise with the outcome of the trials of Enron's top executives;

::# The firm Arthur Andersen was found guilty of obstructing justice, which needs to be sourced also;

::# The claim that shareholders received limited returns, despite losing billions needs to be quantified and sourced.

::As I say, the amount of detail in this article is extensive, but it would be a shame not to make sure it is all accurate and sourced. I think that if we can source as much of this as possible, it will be a big leap forward. Lets address each of these statements one by one, and see if we replace them with sourced content. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:18, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

:::All of these statements were developed based on the prose within the article which are already cited to one or more sources. As WP:LEAD states, "Because the lead will usually repeat information also in the body, editors should balance the desire to avoid redundant citations in the lead with the desire to aid readers in locating sources for challengeable material." Citations should only be used for this lead for sourcing any quotes or financial figures (such as the stock price or bankruptcy totals). I think this setup is to deter readers from only looking at the lead, they should want to read the body as well.

:::1. "By 1992, Enron was the largest merchant of natural gas in North America..." That seems like a positive start for the company after seven years. The company did have positive revenue/net income in the beginning years, and it was the later modification of numbers in the mid-late 1990s that led to the inflation of the company's value. In addition, it isn't comparing against competitors in this statement.

:::2. "However, when Skilling joined the company, he demanded that the trading business adopted mark-to-market accounting, citing..." What sort of context were you thinking of adding?

:::3. "Fastow, along with other executives, "...created off-balance-sheet vehicles, complex financing structures, and deals so bewildering that few people can understand them even now."", "...including capitalizing on loopholes found in the accounting industry's standards...", etc.

:::4. "Enron's audit committee did not have the technical knowledge to properly question the auditors on accounting questions related to the company's special purpose entities. The committee was also unable to question the management of the company due to pressures placed on the committee.", "Anderson's auditors were pressured by Enron's management to defer..."

:::5. I don't believe that this statement would need a citation in the lead, but looking at the statement now, it definitely could be reworded. Got any ideas?

:::6. The internal analysis includes the focus by Sherron Watkins, and outside reporters/analysts that began looking closer at the company's financial documents. Also, it's currently worded to say that it "began to reveal", as the full allegations of fraud weren't brought until later.

:::7. They're easy to source, but I don't think it's necessary when already covered in the article. If the fire sale price mentions the price, then a source could be used.

:::8. Already sourced in the bankruptcy section.

:::9. Already sourced in the Enron trials section.

:::10. This is covered in the trials section regarding AA.

:::11. If we add the specific figures then a citation should be added.

The lead definitely could be reworded, but as stated above, only a few of the statements actually need citations. Feel free to readd the prior lead and reword it as you see fit. It's good to take a look at each statement individually, and we want to ensure it is accurate. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 18:21, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

:I reverted the changes as it conflicts with some of the points raised above. We need a source for the $11 billion in losses for shareholders to mention in the article itself (before it can be mentioned in the lead). In addition, I removed "In addition to being the largest bankruptcy reorganization in American history, Enron undoubtedly is the biggest audit failure." This statement is taken verbatim from the source, and the use of "undoubtedly" doesn't sound neutral (although it's likely true, we still need to ensure that there is no POV). In addition it would need to be mentioned somewhere in the article before including it in the lead. Looking at the chart near the bottom of the article, the stock price was not at $.10 (until the following year). It would be confusing for readers to have conflicting numbers, so that's why I removed that. If there is a reason to readd the statements, we need to make sure they're properly sourced and are mentioned within the article. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 00:08, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

::I have [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Enron_scandal&diff=316643754&oldid=316589137 added back] the sourced analysis by Benston and the comments by Bratton, with a correction to the stock price ($0.10 to $1). --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:14, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

:::I fixed the stock price as it was actually around a dollar at the end of November, not October (still can't believe some analysts kept saying "buy"). I removed the stock ticker symbol as that was a little specific for the lead, but brought it down into the article. The $11 billion statement conflicts with the mention of $74 billion (in the Aftermath section) that was lost over several years, should we include that statistic in the lead instead? I also readded some of the summary details (such as the proposed buyout by Dynergy) so that the lead better summarizes the article. The lead is also at four paragraphs per conventions at WP:LEAD. How does the lead look? I think it covers both of our revisions, and I'd prefer to discuss it here instead of undoing the lead over the same items. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 01:36, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

::::There is no conflict between the $11 billion loss in shareholders equity reported in Enron's balance sheet (see [http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa497.pdf Benston, p12]) and $74 billion lost through the drop in the value of Enron shares per the [http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0620/p02s01-usju.html Axtman]. Axtman is vague about what that $74 billion loss represents, but it must be the losses incurred by investors as the share price dropped from around $90 until the company filed for bankruptcy at which point the shares became worthless. Note that the share price of a corporation will always trade at a premium or discount to the fair value of its assets, which accounts for the difference. Both statements are key to understanding why the Enron scandal is such a notable event; the economic losses were both colossal and catastrophic. If Enron's bankruptcy was the largest ever at the time ($63.4 billion), the shareholders lost $11 billion of this as a direct result (the rest of the lost was suffered by lenders and creditors). For this reason, I would be grateful if you could restore the Benston citation - it is key to this whole article. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:33, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

:::::Thanks for explaining that. I readded the figure to the lead as well as to the image caption of the stock price drop, so that it wasn't mentioned only in the lead. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 02:52, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

{{Talk:Enron scandal/GA1}}

I have reverted the recent changes for several reasons. The addition of the revenue recognition section, although beneficial to the article, cannot remain in its current state. The majority of the content is nearly verbatim from the source, and although the source is attributed, editors are required to either expand/further develop the text or put it in quotation marks indicating it is being quoted from a source. Since it doesn't appear feasible to add quotation marks around the entire section, it needs to be re-written. I've removed it from the article for now, but if it is re-written it would make a great addition to the article. The lead was also reverted as it can only remain at four paragraphs per WP:LEAD and since there was some duplication. Please see the above discussion for further explanation. Hopefully we can fix the section and readd it to the article, but at its current state, I have removed it. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 00:41, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

:I am so disappointed and I would have that that you of all editors would understand the significance of these sources. To be frank, I not sure why you believe removing sourced content is constructive. I can understand that removing unsourced content, or summarising verbose sections is beneficial, but removing sourced content seems to me to run contrary to the whole mission of Wikipedia, and removing high quality coverage makes no sense at all. I am not sure why valuable coverage is being singled out for such negative treatment. In the first instance the deleted text should be restored, and an appology rendered.
In fairness, its not down to me to "fix" this article the way you want it to be. I will never know what goes on in your mind, or which parts of the text are argreeable or disagreeable to you. Revenue recognition is central to understanding how Enron scandal occured, and I have got a reliable secondary source to prove it. If you wish to ammend the sources to extract more meaning or context from them, that would be an improvement. But removing sourced coverage, particularly top quality coverage (the likes of which I have not seen in any other article about a company), is not acceptable. Please restore all my edits and lets see what proposals you have, rather than just deleting solid gold coverage. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 11:20, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

::This article is not about how I want it to read, but for the readers who refer to it and our core policies that specifically dictate how articles should be written. I did not say anything about not using the sources, I said that we cannot just copy what they had written and pass it off as our own. It doesn't matter if any content is sourced/unsourced, if it is copied verbatim, then that's plagiarism. We are fortunate to have so many great academic sources on this article, and I would like to see these sources used as it does help better explain the article's content. If you had added the content but had put it in your own words while still citing the source, I wouldn't have removed it. I'd invite you to take a stab at it first, and I'll help to copyedit/expand it at that point. If you need further clarification on this, please let me know. Good job finding these new sources. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 00:14, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

:::I think you may be mistaken about the accusation of plagiarism because I am making no representation of them as my own work, and I have modified the original accademic papers, which in turn cite other accademic papers. Since the sources of coverage are attributed by citation, and only selective sentences have been extracted from them, this is far removed from wholesale copying of entire texts without attribution. However, perhaps this is where we need to get a third opinion. The text disputed text is as follows:

::::1. One consequence of these events was the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002, as a result of the first admissions of fraudulent behavior made by Enron. The act significantly raises criminal penalties for securities fraud, for destroying, altering or fabricating records in federal investigations or any scheme or attempt to defraud shareholders.Aiyesha Dey, and Thomas Z. Lys: "Trends in Earnings Management and Informativeness of Earnings Announcements in the Pre- and Post-Sarbanes Oxley Periods (Kellogg School of Management, Evanston, Illinois, February, 2005) p.5

::::2. Energy merchants are firms that engage in wholesale trading and risk management and development of electric power plants but also natural gas pipelines, storage, and processing facilities.Foss, Michelle Michot,Enron and the Energy Market Revolution, University of Houston Law Center, September 2003, p. 1[http://www.beg.utexas.edu/energyecon/energy-inc/members/Course_Modules/Class_Info/Foss_Enron%20Chapter_Final_9%205%2003.pdf]

::::3.If a merchant takes the risks of buying and selling goods, it is allowed to report the entire selling price of the products as revenues and the cost of purchases as cost of goods sold. By contrast, an "agent" is someone who provides a service to the customer, but does not really take up the risks of buying and selling. Under the agent model, the service provider is allowed to report the trading fee, brokerage fee, etc. as revenue, but not the entire value of the transaction.Dharan, Bala G. and Bufkins, William R., Red Flags in Enron's Reporting of Revenues and Key Financial Measures, (Enron: Corporate Fiascos And Their Implications, Foundation Press, ISBN: 1587785781, 2004, p.101-103[http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~bala/files/dharan-bufkins_enron_red_flags.pdf]

::::4. Enron adopted an aggressive accounting interpretation of what constitutes revenues by adopting a so-called "merchant model" of revenues, whereby Enron reported the entire value of each trade on which it was a counterparty as its revenue, rather than reporting as revenues only its trading or brokerage fees. Traditional trading firms such as Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch use a more conservative "agent model" of revenue reporting, in which only the trading or brokerage fee would be reported as revenue.Dharan, Bala G. and Bufkins, William R., Red Flags in Enron's Reporting of Revenues and Key Financial Measures, (Enron: Corporate Fiascos And Their Implications, Foundation Press, ISBN: 1587785781, 2004, p.101-103[http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~bala/files/dharan-bufkins_enron_red_flags.pdf]

::::5. Enron’s use of distorted, hyper-inflated revenues was more important to it in creating the impression of innovation, high growth, and spectacular business performance than the masking of debt. In four short years from 1996 to 2000, its revenues had increased by more than 750 percent, rising from $13.3 billion in 1996 to $100.8 billion in 2000. From 1999 to 2000, Enron’s revenues increased 151% from $40.1 billion to $100.8 billion. This growth of over 65% per year is unprecedented in any industry let alone the staid energy industry that normally views even a two or three percent a year growth as a decent achievement. Enron reported pre-bankruptcy revenues of $138.7 billion for the first nine months of 2001, pushing it up to Number 6 on the Fortune Global 500, passing DaimlerChrysler, Royal Dutch/Shell, General Electric and Toyota and ChevronTexaco. As can be seen by the use of revenues as the basis for Fortune’s annual ranking of companies, annual revenues can he an important psychological measure that carries a lot of weight among investors and the public as an indicator of success and economic size.Dharan, Bala G. and Bufkins, William R., Red Flags in Enron's Reporting of Revenues and Key Financial Measures, (Enron: Corporate Fiascos And Their Implications, Foundation Press, ISBN: 1587785781, 2004, p.97-100[http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~bala/files/dharan-bufkins_enron_red_flags.pdf]

::::6. This practice of reporting inflated trading revenue was not limited to just Enron in the energy industry. Many other companies in the energy trading industry felt the need to meet the competitive pressure from Enron’s rapid ascendancy; and most of the main competitors of Enron adopted financial reporting methods that were identical to Enron’s. Soon, several energy companies with substantive trading operations moved into the elite top 50 of the Fortune 500 category induding Duke Energy; El Paso Corporation, Reliant Energy, and Dynegy Inc.Dharan, Bala G. and Bufkins, William R., Red Flags in Enron's Reporting of Revenues and Key Financial Measures, (Enron: Corporate Fiascos And Their Implications, Foundation Press, ISBN: 1587785781, 2004, p.105 [http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~bala/files/dharan-bufkins_enron_red_flags.pdf]

{{reflist}}

I think you will find I have modified the text in most instances. However, where a sentence is short, or contains useful facts or significant coverage, I have left the original text for full effect. Whether this is plagarism or not, i am not qualified to venture an opinion. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 00:42, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

:For example, bullet point five's paragraph was nearly word-for-word. It would be beneficial to cut that down and/or reword it. We don't need to include all of the information, but perhaps focus on the most important figures. Readers can always go to the source for additional information. For the individual statements, if we don't re-phrase it ourselves, then we can say something like "In her paper Enron and the Energy Market Revolution, Michelle Foss defined energy merchants as "firms that engage in wholesale trading and risk management and development of electric power plants but also natural gas pipelines, storage, and processing facilities." This would allow us to include the information in the article while adding new citations. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 01:01, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

::I can't win for the loosing. If item 5 is word for word, it is because the commentary, criticism and analysis it provides is worth including in this article. This is solid gold coverage, for it increases our understanding the whole scandal: the immense scale of earnings manipulation is key to explaining why Enron' management was so successful at projecting an image as one of the world's top companies. It also provides context in terms of comparison with other companies, as well as showing how Enron attracted the publicity it needed to attract investors.
As regards item 2, you will see I have already rephrased it if you compare it with the orginal source. It is very useful definition, because it lays the groundwork for the paragraph that follows (item 3) in the way that it refers to "merchants". There are so many different terms used in the business world to define the same thing, so we may as well use the terms and definitions direct from the source, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 11:26, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

----

Many thanks to Ash for taking time out to respond. In response to the concerns raised by Nehrams2020, I feel that the addition of this content is supported by Wikipedia policy. Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria states that "Articles and other Wikipedia pages may, in accordance with the guideline, use brief verbatim textual excerpts from copyrighted media, properly attributed or cited to its original source or author". As a gesture of goodwill, I would be grateful if he could restore my edits in full, or at least agree to do so. Perhaps then we can go on to discuss his specific proposals to amend the text. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 16:58, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

::I have no problems with re-adding the content to the article. I'll make an attempt at cleaning up the prose later tonight before adding it since some of the examples listed above don't appear to comply with the "brief" component of the guideline. Although the content may be well-written in its original format, we should be able to put it in our own words and still illustrate the material, especially if we can include additional sources that cover the same material. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 02:47, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

:::Something came up tonight, will tackle it tomorrow. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 06:15, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

::::I have re-added the the sourced content, so that we can both track the changes. I personally take the view all of the above citations are brief, in the sense that they comprise of no more than a few sentence each. If you can find addtional sources as, that would be useful. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:04, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

:::::I have reworded the added information and also moved some of it around to improve the flow of the article. It would be good to find additional sources for the newly added section (along with others) that only have one or two primary source. I'll see if I can find some more later this week. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 03:43, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

::::::I have restored the sentence "Enron’s use of distorted, "hyper-inflated" revenues was more important to it in creating the impression of innovation, high growth, and spectacular business performance than the masking of debt", as I think this is a highly significant statement. Other sources support this as well: I came across [http://www.ba.metu.edu.tr/~adil/BA-web/The%20Revenue%20Games%20People%20Play.doc this article], which might help you with your research. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:21, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

User:Gavin.collins has confirmed that due to a misunderstanding, much of the sourced text that he has added in to this article is a copyvio of the source he got it from. I don't have access to most of these sources - they are not online. Is there a possibility of anyone here rewriting Gavin's contributions to avoid copyvio. Otherwise I am going to have to delete all of his contributions, which would kind of wreck the article. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 16:10, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

:I'll be able to re-write the portions of the article, but it will not be in the next day or so as requested on his talk page as it will take some time to look at each source. It's sat here this long already, so another few days are not going to hurt. I'll probably be able to do it within the week and would welcome Gavin.collins' assistance. He did a great job finding the quality sources for improving this article, we just need to tinker with the wording a bit. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 01:45, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

::I'd rather it was fixed than deleted. I'll leave you to talk to Gavin about it - I don't think he's unwilling to fix it, but I don't know how he's placed for time. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 11:24, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

:::I'm going to be busy for the rest of the week, but I'll be able to fix the article at the beginning of next week. Anything Gavin/others wants to do between that time would be great. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 06:08, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

::::Okay, I've rewrote, reworded, removed, and shuffled sentences based on the sources cited. I had previously done this when I first started working on the article, but I believe I have now fixed all other occurrences. In addition, I also added WebCite links for all of the sources where possible to prevent link rot. This article has the potential to be an FA candidate down the line but is going to need further copyediting for clarity and additional book sources (along with a few images). --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 06:24, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I think the figure quoted in the 4th paragraph of 1 The Rise of Enron are incorrect.

It states that the Enron stock rose by 311%! - but the next sentence seems to give a contrary effect. I wonder if a decimal point has got missed out somewhere. I have placed a citation needed note on this.

If you have better information, please correct this.

The complete sentence reads:

Enron's stock increased from the start of the 1990s until year-end 1998 by 311%[citation needed], only modestly higher than the average rate of growth in the Standard & Poor 500 index.

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Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 13:49, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

I would have contacted you on your talk page but could not figure out who you are. I clicked on 2604:3d08:5681:2c00:d64:a5f:5674:abe9 but it did not go to a talk page. I'm trying to understand why your opinion is superior to mine. My comment to the first reversion was sincere. Your reply seemed to be intentionally provocative. I'm not a vandal and do not respond well to being called one. Wiki name (talk) 15:34, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

:While I think the additon of Enron's manual of ethics can be supportive to the main article, I don't think the caption is; sure if some publication or person wrote or said that Enron having a manual of ethics is ironic it can be added like so in the picture caption, but just having the word "irony" on this picture with no context it makes it look more of a humoristic nature rather to inform the reader that, even though Enron is the subject of this accounting scandal, they had a manual of ethics. -Gouleg (Talk • Contribs) 17:10, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

::You did not explain why your opinion is superior to mine. Though a definition of irony is "incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result" I'm happy to change the caption to "The subjects of this accounting scandal published this manual of ethics" if you prefer it. Wiki name (talk) 17:54, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

:::Never implied my opinion was superior to yours. Just stated why this caption didn't fit with the overall encyclopedic tone of this article; one of the main rules of Wikipedia is to infrom in a neutral POV, which is not restricted to negative or positive bias, but also tone of writing. I agree with your new suggested caption for the picture. -Gouleg (Talk • Contribs) 18:14, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

30px

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect :EnWrong. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 August 27#EnWrong until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Steel1943 (talk) 18:19, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

While I would never suggest that ownership is a good thing, I've noticed yet another instance where an article so large is fragmented with parts having no (remaining) connection to the other text, or history, or relevance.

Out of the blue there's a paragraph beginning:

::Although Michael Kopper worked for Enron for over seven years before the scandal became public, ...

And no identification of who or what is being talked about.

In a version of the article over 10 years ago, the text breathlessly included:

::Nonetheless, Kopper would be one of the main ingredients in Enrons recipe for disaster when he, along with Glisan, would help Fastow create the off-balance sheets for the corporation.

Looking around one can find mentions in other articles to Chewco and JEDI and such. So the person is real. And apparently contributed a lot to the debacle. But here, no explanation or, that is, no remaining explanation. Shenme (talk) 03:27, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

After FTX collapse, Sam Bankman-Fried exit, new CEO bankruptcy expert lawyer John Ray is in the news. [https://www.asiamarkets.com/john-ray-iii/ "John Ray III, was chairman and president of Enron Creditors Recovery Corp."] Seems important. Perhaps someone with an interest, understanding of the Enron debacle can weave Ray into the article.

Doug Grinbergs (talk) 21:41, 12 November 2022 (UTC)