Ray (Eclecticology) wrote:
"The official name for any country is the long form..."
Sorry, but I stopped reading at that point.
I think what he meant (or should have said) is the following, which is
subtly yet crucially different:
>>> The official name for any *government* is the long form.
China, whether it's "really" one country or not, currently has two
sovereign political divisions: PRC and ROC. If one division claims
jurisdiction over the other, we should mention that in the article. But
we should absolutely not respect one side's claims over the other. We
must remain neutral, even if "everyone knows" that the only legitimate
government of all of China is X.
Ed Poor
On Monday 09 December 2002 04:00 am, Larry Sanger wrote:
> A comment from Mav (whose judgment and hard work I admire virtually always
> :-) ) suddenly turned a light on in my head (i.e., I had a sudden
> realization)....
Thank you. Coming from you I consider that to be a great compliment.
>....
> I think I understand now why Mav and some others were so seemingly (to me)
> peremptory about the issue. It's because they are working on
> [[WikiProject Countries]], and they take it to be in they brief to find
> the appropriate short form name of every country on the list. I suspect
> the people at work on this WikiProject see "People's Republic of China"
> and say, quite reasonably, that people call the PRC "China"--that's the
> popular name. Similarly for the case of "Republic of Ireland" and
> "Ireland. But again, that doesn't mean that "China" always means the PRC,
> or that "Ireland" always means the Republic. The PRC and the Republic
> have been around for less than 100 years, and China per se and Ireland per
> se are ancient and far greater and ultimately more important than the
> modern states.
Yes, I guess this is the main reason why Jeronimo, me et al. favored China =
PRC. We developed a naming convention for countries that was an extension of
the official common name naming convention. Our focus for the WkiProject is
on the modern states so I guess we lost the big picture.
>...... In the
> context of an encyclopedia, it seems pretty obvious that "China" should be
> used to mean China--not just part of it--*all* of China, its whole
> history, its many languages, its people (all of them), etc. This,
> unfortunately or not, means that the article about the modern state, the
> PRC, cannot dominate the page called [[China]]. Similarly, the article
> about the modern state, the Republic of Ireland, cannot dominate the page
> called [[Ireland]]. China and Ireland as topics are much bigger than
> those states.
As you should know from reading [[talk:Ireland]] I've already expressed the
opinion that [[Ireland]] should be about the island, Irish culture, music and
ancient history. The republic and northern UK-dependent territory should have
their own articles.
This issue and reading your email provoked me to reevaluate my previous
position on China (thus my silence on this issue so far - which is very
unusual considering this is a naming issue).
It should be noted, though, that what you state above is not as obvious as you
may think:
Princeton University's WordNet Dictionary
China
n 1: a communist nation that covers a vast territory in eastern
Asia; the most populous country in the world
Also, Britannica Concise
http://education.yahoo.com/search/be?lb=t&p=url%3Ac/china
Republic, E Asia. Area: 3,700,000 sq mi (9,583,000 sq km). Population (1997
est.): 1,227,740,000). Capital: Beijing. ....
Of course we aim to be better than Britannica and other sources. So I guess it
comes down to how much work we want to do and whether or not we want to be
lumpers or dividers. I've always been more of a divider myself so what you
say above has a certain appeal to me. (NOTE: Much of previous debate on this
was based on NPOV issues relating to Taiwan's claims. I was also reacting to
a suggestion that [[China]] be turned into just a disambiguation page! This
made me see red and probably clouded my judgement.).
You also mention a very valid ambiguity issue; China and the PRC really are
two different things in spite of common usage. The reason is that the vast
majority of Chinese history and the development of Chinese, art, science and
culture occurred before the PRC. As our naming conventions state; "..article
naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would
most easily recognize with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity.." I now see
ambiguity that needs to be corrected.
So I favor moving [[History of China]] to [[China]] and moving [[China]] to
[[People's Republic of China]]. This will require some work on all the
affected articles though (a lot of text needs to be rearranged and moved
around). Then the history of the PRC will officially start in 1949 with an
explanation of the major events of the revolution that preceded it. [[China]]
will then be the main article that will introduce all things Chinese and link
to more detailed articles on various topics - which includes the current
republic at [[People's Republic of China]].
But now we have a bigger problem; What about France, The Netherlands, Germany,
Denmark, Mexico, and many many other nations whose current government was
started way after our histories on them begin? With the new logic, it doesn't
seem appropriate to have [[History of the French Republic]] mention Louis XIV
or Napoleon. Or the history of the United States of Mexico say much about the
Aztecs. This will require a great deal of work to sort out and can't be
solved by just renaming articles.
Yours in the WikiWay,
Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
WikiKarma payment. Have you had your Wiki today?
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Starck (new)
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Huguenot&diff=475924&oldid=4758…
I am sure it escaped nobody that all this conversation
is taking place on the main list - not on the english
list.
So, on top of supporting adding [flame] in the
subject, I'll be glad if - should you go on on the
subject (sigh) - you could move it to the list where
it belongs. English matters.
NB : I don't mean antisemitism is only an english
matter ;-) Sure is not.
This
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-December/008154.html
is a general matter
This
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-December/008182.html
maybe is not.
This
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-December/008157.html
maybe is not
This
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-December/008194.html
maybe is not.
I know, it's tricky. Maybe a good part of this
conversation could have been on a talk page also ?
Main list is for general matters. Not for english
banning, english page protection, english flame wars.
People should not unregister from a list dealing with
general issues on encyclopedia building, one of the
places where internationals can meet, just because an
english flame war is at the wrong place!
Or should I go to the english list to bother you about
our last conversations with Iala ???
I am catholic. It is the advent time. So peace on you all.
__________________________________________________
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Jonathan Walther wrote:
>Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>I agree that it's not good to use administrative powers "in the heat
>>of battle".
>>Do you want sysop access, Erik? You should have it.
>Given Eriks partisan war-editing, I humbly request that he not be given
>sysop powers. I don't trust him to use them wisely.
OTC, he's the one arguing that sysop powers shouldn't be used in edit wars.
I support giving Erik (Eloquence) administrator status on [[en:]].
Discussion of this should move to <wikiEN-l>.
-- Toby
Dan,
There are about 10 replies on the mailing lists on this issue. Would you like me to forward those to you?
Ed Poor (not frozen but considerably melted)
Hi all,
If you think that this is an aberration and Ed will not abuse sysop
trust in the future, then I consider this issue to be adequately
handled. But I do hope that if we are forced to revisit this issue
(with Ed or anybody else), we are quick to act on it.
Cheers,
Dan Keshet
I haven't read all the appropriate mailing lists but I scanned them to
see if this subject was being discussed already. If it is being
discussed in a place I couldn't find, I apologize and please let me
know.
The "Richard Wagner" article has been repeatedly stagnated by untimely,
inappropriate freezing by Ed Poor, who is both one of the authors of the
page and one of the participants in the talk page discussion. It is a
grave breach of trust for somebody with "sysop" powers to "pull rank" by
freezing an article he is editing. Sysop isn't supposed to be a rank,
but a measure of trust. Trust which at least I have totally lost in
him. This is not the first time he has done this and it is not the
first time people have called him on it.
Because of this, I would like to request that Ed Poor's sysop powers be,
at the very least, frozen until he can prove that he is capable of not
abusing them.
Thank you,
Dan Keshet
PS: please cc: me on answers; I am not on any of these lists.
Well, thank you, Erik, for that magnanimous statement of support.
I take it to mean that my sysop rights should be melted, rather than frozen. Or am I all wet? ;-)
Ed Poor
Clutch seems is seriously violating the NPOV policy and needs to stop.
The worst offenses have occured in the social worker article. See diff
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Social_worker&diff=471250&oldid…
Note:
"Social workers are often found in hospitals, and play a hand in ear-marking
newborn babies for potential seizure and kidnapping by government adoption
departments."
"Social workers are widely hated."
"Social workers are trained to treat their feelings and gut more important
than reason, rationality, and respect for the human dignity of those they
seek to help. "
and
"Social workers are the foot soldiers of the ivory tower social engineers that
governments and big businesses hire to keep the masses under control."
This is just so bad that no further comment is needed.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Um, we're still talking about Clutch's views about social work.
I fail to see what this has to do with Wikipedia.
Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell