Fred Bauder writes:
> really don't know how to resolve this problem which I see
> as being quite difficult to resolve. For example, I
believe
> (without doing a lot of research on the question) there
> is no evidence from Egyptian sources of the existence of
> Moses, or Joseph either. How do we deal with this and
> what significance does it have?
This is an excellent question, important for Wikipedia to
deal with. (This issue itself is important, but by
extension, covers many related issues.)
I agree with your solution. We use NPOV phrasing to discuss
this problem, in the way you suggest.
Below I offer my ideas for an addition to the NPOV article,
and I would like you (Fred), Steve Rubenstein, and others
to respond. If you are responding about Wikipedia NPOV
policy vis-a-vis history, I guess your reply should be sent
here (to the Wiki-En list). If your reply is specific to
that of the Hebrew Bible and history, then I guess you
should reply to: [[Talk:The Bible and history]]
> rest of Fred's message deleted to save space; I agree
with him.
Here is my proposed text, for use in Wikipedia:WikiProject
articles on religion, and perhaps in the NPOV article
itself.
* Wikipedia's [[NPOV]] policy often means multiple points
of view. This means providing not only the points of view
of different groups today, but different groups in the
past.
*Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. One important task for
articles is to explain things. In the case of human beliefs
and practices, explanation encompasses not only what
motivates individuals who hold these beliefs and practices,
but an account of how such beliefs and practices came to be
and took shape.
*Wikipedia articles on history and religion draw from a
religion's sacred texts. But Wikipedia articles on history
and religion also draw from modern archaeological,
historical and scientific sources
*Many adherents of a religion will object to a critical
historical treatments, claiming that this discriminates
against their religious beliefs. They would prefer that the
articles describe their faith as they see it, which is from
an ahistorical perspective (e.g. the way things are is the
way things have always been; any differences are from
heretical sects that don't represent the real religion.)
This point of view must also be mentioned, yet note that
there is no contradiction. NPOV policy means that we say
that Group A says one thing for somesuch reasons, while
group B says another thing for other reasons.
*A note on using the term "fundamentalism". Please see the
article on [[fundamentalism]] for the technical definition
of this term. This word is used in articles on religion,
but should only be used in one its technical senses. We
should take care to explain what we mean by this term so
(a) as not to cause unnecessary offense, and (b) so as not
to mislead the reader (most people being unaware of how
this word should be used.) We should not use this term as a
pejorative phrase.
Shalom,
Robert (RK)
=====
"No one is poor except he who lacks knowledge....A person who has knowledge has everything. A person who lacks knowledge, what has he? Once a person acquires knowledge, what does he lack? [Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim, 41a]
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I'm not sure if this has been discussed in the past, but I have been
wondering about categories for images.
I have been wanting to categorize some of the images I've contributed
(mostly home-made maps). It seemed highly desirablet o me to create
separate categories, for images only, so that we don't have "mixed"
categories of both articles and images, which would be quite ugly and
not very useful at all.
There is no "Category:Maps" right now. I thought of making one, with
subcategories such as "Category:Historical maps" etc. Then it occured
to me that those categories might be best used for *articles* about
well-known maps (such articles exist), like the [[Zeno map]] article
for exaple.
So what do people think about this situation. I think images are
worth categorization. Should there be a separate namespaces, or
should this done within the current system of categorization (I would
prefer the latter personally). A bit of policy would be helpful here.
Matt [[User:Decumanus]]
Timwi quite rightly reverted my changes to the funding message,
wherein I put <center> and <i> tags on it. He pointed out the
right place to do this is in the CSS.
Er ... where is the Classic CSS?
- d.
Kurt Jansson wrote:
>The ability to tell journalists "Wikipedia is completly free of
>advertising" is
>worth more than a few cents from Google ads, IMHO. With ads, even if
>opt-in, we
>are much less of a bird of paradise in the web's top 1000. And there
>might also
>be a negative psychological effect on the donors.
I think we're talking about more than "a few cents from Google ads."
I was talking awhile back with the guy who created envirolink.org.
They started running Google ads awhile ago, and I was surprised when
he told me how much money the ads were bringing in. I forget the
amount, but as I recall it was more than $1,000 per month. And for
Wikipedia, which gets a lot more traffic than Envirolink, I think the
revenues would likely be greater.
I you want to see how the ads look on envirolink, here's the URL:
http://www.envirolink.org/
Of all the advertising I've seen on the web, the Google ads are the
most tasteful and least intrusive. They're text-based ads, which
means little use of bandwidth. They're topic-relevant. (The ads on
envirolink.org all have something to do with the environment.)
They're clearly labeled as advertising, and they can placed in a
position on the page where they don't overwhelm its editorial
content. Also, it is possible to reject advertising deemed
inappropriate. (The envirolink webmaster told me that they have
rejected attempts by anti-environmental organizations to place ads on
their website.)
As for the value of the ability to tell journalists that Wikipedia is
completely free of advertising, what value is that exactly? Most
journalists work themselves for publications that rely on advertising
for part of their revenue. I happen to work as a journalist for an
organization that does not accept advertising or corporate
contributions, but we're the exception, not the rule, and the reason
we follow this policy is because our specific mission is to act as a
critical watchdog of corporate and government propaganda.
As far as credibility with journalists is concerned, the issues are:
(1) Would acceptance of advertising diminish the independence and
integrity of Wikipedia's non-advertising content? For this to be the
case, we would have to imagine a scenario in which Wikipedia users
shy away from adding certain types of content out of fear that it
would offend an advertiser. Given the way that Wikipedia operates, I
think this scenario is unlikely.
(2) Is there a danger that visitors would confuse advertising with
editorial content? I think this danger is actually small.
(3) Is there transparent disclosure of the relationship between
Google and Wikipedia? This should be pretty easy too. Every Google ad
comes with a link at the top that says, "Ads by Google." Clicking on
that llink opens a page that explains how the advertising works.
--Sheldon Rampton
> From: Geoff Burling <llywrch(a)agora.rdrop.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The Church of Scientology is discovered to
> have discovered Wikipedia!
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0407142137290.551-100000(a)joan.burling.com>
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
>
> On Wed, 14 Jul 2004, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>
> > I recently told a reporter that representatives of the Chinese
> > government are welcome to edit zh.wikipedia.org if they like.
> > I think we can extend the same courtesy to representatives
> > of the Church of Scientology.
I find this quite alarming. At the existing policy page
[[Wikipedia:Auto-biography]] we find "editing an article about
yourself or your organization is also generally considered
improper and best avoided." Should we announce a change of
policy now?
Zero.
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Geoff Burling wrote:
>I find this quite alarming. At the existing policy page
>[[Wikipedia:Auto-biography]] we find "editing an article about
>yourself or your organization is also generally considered
>improper and best avoided." Should we announce a change of
>policy now?
As currently worded, this policy page contradicts itself. On the one
hand, it states:
>If you are reasonably significant, someone will create an article
>about you sooner or later. You are free to contribute to that
>article, but please only add verifiable information and be
>especially careful to respect the neutral point of view.
This says unambiguously that it is okay for people to contribute to
articles about themselves. Later, however, the article states,
>Editing an article about yourself or your organization is also
>generally considered improper and best avoided.
Since there is no clear difference between "contributing" to the
Wikipedia and "editing an article," these two statements contradict
each other.
Another problem with this policy emerges when it goes beyond talking
about individual autobiographies and says that people shouldn't edit
articles about "your organization." The problem here is that there is
a wide range in degrees of affiliation and "ownership" of
organizations. Does this policy mean that only the founder of an
organization should hesitate to edit an article about it? What about
the president of an organization's board of directors? Its executive
director? What about someone who is just an active volunteer or
employee? Extending a little further outward, should all members of
Greenpeace feel constrained from editing the article about
Greenpeace? What about Democrats who want to edit the article about
the Democratic Party? What about Jews, Catholics or Italians who want
to edit articles about their religion, nation or ethnic group?
These aren't merely questions in the abstract. They are at the heart
of what we are discussing with regard to the Church of Scientology.
Strictly speaking, it isn't true that the "Church of Scientology" has
discovered Wikipedia. A church is an inanimate object that doesn't
"discover" things. What has happened is that some *members* of the
church of Scientology have discovered Wikipedia. But how is this
different from having members of the Catholic or Mormon Church edit
articles about their particular religions?
--Sheldon Rampton
I appreciate RK's work on developing our NPOV policy concerning historical
context for articles such as ones on religion. For what it is worth, I
think we can explain it in a simpler and more direct way.
1) NPOV often means multiple points of view. This means providing not only
the points of view of different groups today, but different groups in the past.
2) Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. One important task for articles is to
explain things. In the case of human beliefs and practices, explanation
encompasses not only what motivates individuals who hold these beliefs and
practices, but an account of how such beliefs and practices came to be and
took shape.
Steve
Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
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On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 10:41:18 -0500, Sheldon Rampton
<sheldon.rampton(a)verizon.net> wrote:
> Tim wrote:
>
> >Concluding factual inaccuracy or unreliability from mere grammatical
> >imperfection is fallacious and prejudicial.
>
> Well, it tells you *something* about the quality of the article. I'm
> pretty sure that the Encyclopedia Britannica would be concerned if
> one in five of its articles was riddled with grammatical errors.
>
> Mark Richards wrote:
>
> >I don't think so, although, of course, the two
> >sometimes do go together. We have some contributors
> >for whom English is not their first language. Grammar
> >and spelling are an issue for them where facts are
> >not.
>
> Someone who can't communicate well in English is more likely to
> produce inadvertent errors of fact. As one rather humorous example of
> this, years ago I knew a guy from Mexico with a thick accent who
> declared that he wanted "world piss." It took a few minutes before
> everyone figured out that he was actually saying he wanted "world
> peace."
I do not agree with that reasoning at all, some people do not learn
english fluently as most western europeans do and it isnt a part of
their daily culture, just because some chinese scholar has some
trauble with grammar doesnt mean he doesnt have his facts straight. Do
not assume that lack of fluency in a language indicates some sort of
general "thinking problems". In fact, there are lots of people on the
english, and probably other wikipedias who are far from fluent but
have a much better knowlage of some issues than some people who are
fluent in the language, for example some people from arabs countries
which would be more known to middle-eastern issues than the general
population of western europe and the states.
>
> In the stub articles I mentioned, the grammatical flaws in one were
> numerous but insufficient to prevent me from discerning the author's
> intent. In the other article, one of the sentences was so poorly
> written that I couldn't figure out the writer's meaning at all. When
> that's the case, I think poor grammar and spelling do indeed call
> "the facts" of the article into question.
>
> The bottom line, though, is that an encyclopedia article shouldn't
> have errors of grammar *or* fact. I know some respected university
> scholars who have problems with spelling and grammar, but before
> their writings get published, someone fixes those problems. An
> article in the Wikipedia that has problems with spelling and grammar
> clearly hasn't been through the level of review that goes into a
> student's term paper, let alone an article for the Encyclopedia
> Britannica.
>
> I'm not saying that contributors should be banned from Wikipedia if
> they have trouble with spelling and grammar. All I'm saying is that
> Wikipedia hasn't yet figured out how to match Encyclopedia Britannica
> with respect to the quality of its articles. Some individual articles
> in the Wikipedia are undoubtedly superior in quality to corresponding
> articles in the Britannica, but with the Britannica, *every article*
> comes virtually guaranteed to be accurate and well-researched -- and
> also correct in terms of spelling and grammar. That degree of
> confidence doesn't exist across the board for the Wikipedia.
Thing is, it's a totally unrealistic goal to reach some Britannica
"standard", the two encyclopedias have a _totally_ different operating
model, they have their flaws and we have ours, but we also have great
strengths that they do not have. Rather than always try to be like
Britannica an exploration of how we can levage our atvantages would be
in order.
>
> --Sheldon Rampton
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
I guess I need to be clearer about my remarks on NPOV and
history. Basically, I was just trying to show how RK's attempts could be
reduced to more basic principles.
Fred, I don't exactly see how my approach is taking Reform Judaism's
view. Of course, an article on "Judaism" needs to provide Reform as well
as other (Orthodox, etc.) views. Views of Jews from the past (tannaim,
amoraim, saducees) do not necessarily support Reform's POV. Also, the
notion that Judaism itself has a history is not specifically Reform. I am
not a Reform Jew nor an expert on Reform Judaism. I do know that in the
19th century Reform Judaism was characterized by seeing Judaism as a
religion; claiming a connection with the prophetic tradition; renouncing
ritual laws and elevating ethical laws; having services in the vernacular
-- I don't see how a study of history necessarily leads to any of these
positions. What I was trying to say was that any article should show how
current elements of Judaism (to stick to his example) -- Reform, Orthodox,
Conservative, Reconstructionist -- came to be. I don't see how or why
"history" should privilege any one of these over an other.
If I understand Charles's point, I guess it goes without saying: sometimes
people disagree over what historical facts are relevant, or how to
interpret them. In such cases, where there are multiple histories or
interpretations of history, our NPOV policy requires that we make room for
all major views. I don't think anything I wrote precludes an article from
saying "no one is sure how this came to be," or "critical scholars and
theologians have diverging views of the history of this development" or
something like this. By the way, I worked a lot on the Jesus article,
putting in views of critical scholars. At times there were conflicts among
editors over what to include and how. Personally, though, I think it is
now one of Wikipedia's best articles, at least as far as NPOV goes. It
provides the kind of historical account I think RK is talking about, but
provides it in a way, and alongside other accounts, that is NPOV and that
-- so far -- Christian contributors accept.
Steve
Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
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Tim wrote:
>Concluding factual inaccuracy or unreliability from mere grammatical
>imperfection is fallacious and prejudicial.
Well, it tells you *something* about the quality of the article. I'm
pretty sure that the Encyclopedia Britannica would be concerned if
one in five of its articles was riddled with grammatical errors.
Mark Richards wrote:
>I don't think so, although, of course, the two
>sometimes do go together. We have some contributors
>for whom English is not their first language. Grammar
>and spelling are an issue for them where facts are
>not.
Someone who can't communicate well in English is more likely to
produce inadvertent errors of fact. As one rather humorous example of
this, years ago I knew a guy from Mexico with a thick accent who
declared that he wanted "world piss." It took a few minutes before
everyone figured out that he was actually saying he wanted "world
peace."
In the stub articles I mentioned, the grammatical flaws in one were
numerous but insufficient to prevent me from discerning the author's
intent. In the other article, one of the sentences was so poorly
written that I couldn't figure out the writer's meaning at all. When
that's the case, I think poor grammar and spelling do indeed call
"the facts" of the article into question.
The bottom line, though, is that an encyclopedia article shouldn't
have errors of grammar *or* fact. I know some respected university
scholars who have problems with spelling and grammar, but before
their writings get published, someone fixes those problems. An
article in the Wikipedia that has problems with spelling and grammar
clearly hasn't been through the level of review that goes into a
student's term paper, let alone an article for the Encyclopedia
Britannica.
I'm not saying that contributors should be banned from Wikipedia if
they have trouble with spelling and grammar. All I'm saying is that
Wikipedia hasn't yet figured out how to match Encyclopedia Britannica
with respect to the quality of its articles. Some individual articles
in the Wikipedia are undoubtedly superior in quality to corresponding
articles in the Britannica, but with the Britannica, *every article*
comes virtually guaranteed to be accurate and well-researched -- and
also correct in terms of spelling and grammar. That degree of
confidence doesn't exist across the board for the Wikipedia.
--Sheldon Rampton