On Fri, 4 Feb 2011, Fred Bauder wrote:
Clearly there are issues. I'm on Jimbo's side with this though. Some of my earliest edit wars were over whether The People's Republic of China could be described in the introduction as a totalitarian dictatorship. What has currently been hit on is "single-party state governed by the Communist Party of China (CPC)." with a link to "single-party state" an artificial construct for which there is little published authority.
We can't get so picky and bound up in rules that stating the obvious is forbidden.
If we are serious about letting the sources dictate the content, and not the sources justify the content we want, then this comparison does not work.
To have China described as a "totalitarian dictatorship" is in my mind not neutral, because it is simply to apply populist boo words to something we don't like. However, be that as it may, it would be reasonable to apply such a label if it were attributed to a leading Sinologist or some Professor of International Politics, who is an authority on comparative governmental systems, it would not be appropriate if it were attributed to wehatecommmies.com, freechina.org, or Fox News.
To take Jimbo's and Prem Rawat, that's exactly what he did. He used two evangelical anti-cult exorcists, and a couple of tabloids, and the circumvention of "popular press" and "anti-cult" attribution, to negatively label the subject in the most prominent weighted way possible. (And I notice the edit remains in the article - probably because it appeals to the house POV). Now, the chap may be a cultist - but my question would be: how are serious specialist scholars, working in the field, assessing him? And should that not be given more weight than eccentric critics and non-critical journalists?
The sources here are chaff and, even if not excluded, should be weighted as such.
Scott