[WikiEN-l] American diplomatic listings

[james duffy]

>Brion wrote: Because it's not very informative, changes with little notice 
>(therefore
>will likely not be maintained well), and would probably be better
>served by linking to the embassies' home pages which will have more
>information?
>
>Dan wrote in reply
>I still think it's bad to delete npov content, even if it's incomplete.

The problem, Dan, is that for any article to focus on a country's 
relationship with only one country is not NPOV. If an article on say, 
Canada, Australia or New Zealand only listed the diplomatic relationship 
between that country and the UK, it would implicitly be suggesting a special 
relationship between the country and the UK over other states, or that 
Wikipedia believed there was a special relationship that required special 
mention. That by definition is POV, not NPOV.

The problem isn't that it is the US, it is that only one country is 
mentioned in these articles. Whether it was the US, UK, Ireland, China or 
Outer Mongolia is irrelevant; focusing simply on one country and listing its 
diplomatic relationship exclusively gives that relationship an implicit 
extra weight. We should not do that. The only way to introduce a balance 
would be to add in other countries, but that is a POV minefield; use too 
many European states and it would look eurocentric. Too many western 
countries and it would look as though it was giving the west additional 
weight. Too many African states and it would look like it was giving Africa 
special weight. So either to achieve absolute balance you mention ALL 
diplomatic relationships, or none. All diplomatic relationships would be a 
nightmare to construct, would date quickly and would dominate most articles 
on countries because maybe 10% of the article space would be taken up with 
that country's information, and 90% with a list of their diplomatic 
relationships with 150 countries or more, possibly 300 if one takes each 
country's representative in the country whose page it is on, and that 
country's own embassies and ambassadors to each country with whom it has 
diplomatic relations.

I understand totally how this problem arose and don't doubt for one moment 
the genuine reasons behind it. But as it stands it send out the message that 
the most important diplomatic relationship countries have is with the US. 
That is highly POV. A far better solution would be to pull all that info out 
of separate articles and pull it together in an article on [[US Ambassadors 
and diplomats]], which in time could be augmented by pages on anything from 
Congolese Ambassadors and diplomats to Irish, Chinese, Russian, Dutch, 
Argentinian, etc etc etc. That could be linked to pages on what is a [[head 
of state]], on what is a [[Letter of Credence]], on what legally diplomacy 
and diplomatic immunity means, on the differing types of diplomatic 
relationships (head of state to head of state with ambassadors, government 
to government through Charges d'Affaires) But in its present form it is 
unworkable and POV.

JT

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