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Is this NPOV?

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Guy Chapman aka JzG

10 May 2006 10 May '06

3:50 p.m.

The article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sathya_Sai_Baba reads to me like a hagiography, but is that just my Western bias? Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

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Cheney Shill

10 May 10 May

4:17 p.m.

Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net> wrote: The article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sathya_Sai_Baba reads to me like a hagiography, but is that just my Western bias? After reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_birth, I'd say that's in need of an NPOV tag and Sathya's article is giving equal time to other omnipotent godmans. Until you get your god of choice to manifest and declare otherwise, pretty much anyone born outside of the modern medical system can claim virgin birth, etc. And the guy apparently has lots of actual followers. As valid as any other religion. Besides, the article is half references including a section on books by "skeptics and critics".~~~~Pro-Lick (aka, the virgin born tongue) --------------------------------- Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. PC-to-Phone calls for ridiculously low rates.

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Jossi Fresco

11 May 11 May

12:45 a.m.

On May 10, 2006, at 12:17 AM, Cheney Shill wrote:

The article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sathya_Sai_Baba reads to me like a hagiography, but is that just my Western bias?

There has been a huge effort to make this article compliant with WP content policies. Recently, an attempt to informal mediation took place, but unfortunately the mediator had to step down for personal reasons. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BostonMA/Mediation -- Jossi

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Cheney Shill

1:14 a.m.

Jossi Fresco <jossifresco(a)mac.com> wrote: There has been a huge effort to make this article compliant with WP content policies. Recently, an attempt to informal mediation took place, but unfortunately the mediator had to step down for personal reasons. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BostonMA/Mediation I agree with you. It looks relatively compliant. I'm not saying that it couldn't become more NPOV, only that compared to other articles on religious icons, especially those of western-european religions with large followings, the article is equally NPOV.~~~~Pro-Lick --------------------------------- Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. PC-to-Phone calls for ridiculously low rates.

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Peter Jacobi

10 May 10 May

9:33 p.m.

Hi JzG, All,

Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net> wrote: The article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sathya_Sai_Baba reads to me like a hagiography, but is that just my Western bias?

In my not so humble opinion, this is not a problem of NPOV (which we can handle), but of undue weight (which we decided, we won't handle and hope for the best in the future). "Undue weigh" has some (semi-policy?) status, but only within one article. If you compare some biographies of gods, gurus or religious leaders of denominations in the 100.000 to 10.000.000 adherents range, there are huge discrepancies in size: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Kimbangu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%AA_V%C4%83n_Trung http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_Zakka_I_Iwas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sathya_Sai_Baba http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prem_Rawat You need some paasionate adherents as editors to have a long biography, or at least some passionate apostats. Regards, Peter Jacobi [[User:Pjacobi]]

Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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Jossi Fresco

11 May 11 May

12:54 a.m.

I disagree, Peter. The main difference between these examples is the amount of literature available about them, and how widely have these been written about it in scholarly articles, books, etc. A simple Goggle test shows that Simon Kimbangu draws 44 results in search (first two results are from Wikipedia!), while "Sathya Sai Baba draws 364,000 results, and Prem Rawat 219,000 results. IMO, the isssue is not one of "undue weight" or discrepancies of size between articles of religions leaders, providing of course that material used to support the article is well sourced and referenced, the article is not too self-serving and it is written in a neutral voice. -- Jossi On May 10, 2006, at 5:33 AM, Peter Jacobi wrote:

If you compare some biographies of gods, gurus or religious leaders of denominations in the 100.000 to 10.000.000 adherents range, there are huge discrepancies in size: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Kimbangu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%AA_V%C4%83n_Trung http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_Zakka_I_Iwas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sathya_Sai_Baba http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prem_Rawat

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Guy Chapman aka JzG

4:06 a.m.

On Wed, 10 May 2006 08:54:10 -0700, you wrote:

IMO, the isssue is not one of "undue weight" or discrepancies of size between articles of religions leaders, providing of course that material used to support the article is well sourced and referenced, the article is not too self-serving and it is written in a neutral voice.

Up to a point. When a quote from an adherent hosted on a blog site is given equal weight with a documentary by the BBC; and when commentary is included to the effect that the BBC's documentary is biased because the Church of England is content to see the competition knocked; then I suspect that the definition of NPOV is being stretched. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

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Peter Jacobi

4:21 a.m.

Hi Jossi, All,

A simple Goggle test shows that Simon Kimbangu draws 44 results in search (first two results are from Wikipedia!), while "Sathya Sai Baba draws 364,000 results, and Prem Rawat 219,000 results.

Yes, but this only demonstrates a bias towards online sources. Quite often, when I stumble by accident into an article, perhaps interwiki-ing from/to de.wikipedia, I find dozens of weblinks and not a single book given, even when they are easy to find, even for me. At some point of time we must stop trying to evolve into a backup copy of the WWW and draw from other sources. Regards, Peter -- Echte DSL-Flatrate dauerhaft f�r 0,- Euro*! "Feel free" mit GMX DSL! http://www.gmx.net/de/go/dsl

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Stan Shebs

4:38 a.m.

Peter Jacobi wrote:

Quite often, when I stumble by accident into an article, perhaps interwiki-ing from/to de.wikipedia, I find dozens of weblinks and not a single book given, even when they are easy to find, even for me. At some point of time we must stop trying to evolve into a backup copy of the WWW and draw from other sources.

Amen to that, and there are a bunch of editors who've evolved past the "first 10 hits from Google" stage. It's remarkable how little is online, compared to a university library; try picking random pages of random books, oftentimes the net might have a mention of a word or two, but none of the page's factual content. Stan

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Mark Wagner

4:59 a.m.

On 5/10/06, Peter Jacobi <peter_jacobi(a)gmx.net> wrote:

Quite often, when I stumble by accident into an article, perhaps interwiki-ing from/to de.wikipedia, I find dozens of weblinks and not a single book given, even when they are easy to find, even for me. At some point of time we must stop trying to evolve into a backup copy of the WWW and draw from other sources.

Of course, sometimes it's quite hard to find non-web sources. For example, I've written articles on a number of World War II-era German AFVs. My local library doesn't have a single scholarly work on the subject - possibly a legacy of the neo-Nazis in the next state over - and I'm not about to write a Wikipedia article from a book targeted at ten-year-olds. I've been working from websites that reference those scholarly works, instead. It's quite frustrating having a list of three dozen possible print sources, and not being able to find a single one of them in a library within reasonable driving distance. -- Mark [[User:Carnildo]]

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Phoebe Ayers

12 May 12 May

4:03 p.m.

It's quite frustrating having a list of three dozen possible print sources, and not being able to find a single one of them in a library within reasonable driving distance.

Don't forget about [[Interlibrary loan]] :) It's always worth asking your library if they can get something for you. Re: print versus online - ideally, one would look at both and see if they agreed or not, and if not why not. What the best and most appropriate source is really depends on the topic, as well as what one has available. I agree we need more books, though, along with more research and cited sources of all kinds. - phoebe

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jf_wikipedia＠mac.com

11 May 11 May

8:05 a.m.

On May 10, 2006, at 12:21 PM, Peter Jacobi wrote:

Quite often, when I stumble by accident into an article, perhaps interwiki-ing from/to de.wikipedia, I find dozens of weblinks and not a single book given, even when they are easy to find, even for me. At some point of time we must stop trying to evolve into a backup copy of the WWW and draw from other sources.

I agree, Peter. Too much emphasis is given to online sources. IMO, nothing beats a trip to the library. -- Jossi

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geni

8:14 a.m.

On 5/11/06, jf_wikipedia(a)mac.com <jf_wikipedia(a)mac.com> wrote:

On May 10, 2006, at 12:21 PM, Peter Jacobi wrote:

Quite often, when I stumble by accident into an article, perhaps interwiki-ing from/to de.wikipedia, I find dozens of weblinks and not a single book given, even when they are easy to find, even for me. At some point of time we must stop trying to evolve into a backup copy of the WWW and draw from other sources.

I agree, Peter. Too much emphasis is given to online sources. IMO, nothing beats a trip to the library. -- Jossi

That depends. In areas where things change books in libaries can be horibly dated. -- geni

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Jossi Fresco

10:35 a.m.

On May 10, 2006, at 4:14 PM, geni wrote:

Too much emphasis is given to online sources. IMO, nothing beats a trip to the library. -- Jossi

That depends. In areas where things change books in libaries can be horibly dated.

Maybe. But in WP, I would argue that we are better off with an outdated description from a reputable source, than a recent report from an online source that has not an established reputation. Of course, if we have a reputable on-line source, that is another matter. -- Jossi

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geni

10:54 a.m.

On 5/11/06, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco(a)mac.com> wrote:

On May 10, 2006, at 4:14 PM, geni wrote:

Too much emphasis is given to online sources. IMO, nothing beats a trip to the library. -- Jossi

That depends. In areas where things change books in libaries can be horibly dated.

Maybe. But in WP, I would argue that we are better off with an outdated description from a reputable source, than a recent report from an online source that has not an established reputation. Of course, if we have a reputable on-line source, that is another matter. -- Jossi

What if I know the book source is outdated? -- geni

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Prasad J

12:05 p.m.

Why don't you guys put this question to a few Indian Wikipedians and guage the reaction? As I said, I am from India and I can assure you he is a revered person here. This issue may be seen by Hindu Wikipedians (there are quite a few on Wikipedia) as a show of disrespect to Shree Sathya Sai Baba and may. Please let the matter rest.

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geni

4:26 a.m.

On 5/10/06, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco(a)mac.com> wrote:

A simple Goggle test shows that Simon Kimbangu draws 44 results in search (first two results are from Wikipedia!),

Sure his relgion is africa based. One top of that it is based in the DRC. So not many of it's adhearents are going to be in a position to write about it online. -- geni

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Fred Bauder

10 May 10 May

9:42 p.m.

What you are concerned with is the point of view of worshippers who reputedly consider him divine. There is substantial critical material also, including allegations of murder and pedophilia. However this is a living person so those negative criticisms would need to be very well sourced. Fred On May 10, 2006, at 12:50 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

The article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sathya_Sai_Baba reads to me like a hagiography, but is that just my Western bias? Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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17 comments

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participants (11)

Cheney Shill
Fred Bauder
geni
Guy Chapman aka JzG
jf_wikipedia＠mac.com
Jossi Fresco
Mark Wagner
Peter Jacobi
Phoebe Ayers
Prasad J
Stan Shebs