On 5/5/06, Steve Bennett <stevage(a)gmail.com> wrote: Hmm we have a pretty strong european base. -- geni

Steve Bennett wrote: The systemic bias, which stems from the fact that most contributors are living in anglophone countries, where islamist terrorist attacks occured, which resulted in widespread anti-islam bias, is IMHO bad enough. You don't believe me? Well, read it up on [[Islamophobia]] and it's talk page. The JP cartoon poll results have been no surprise to me at all, nor have been the hundreds of cartoon deletions ever since. I can even agree to the many bans, which have applied on editors, which continuously removed the cartoons without inserting a link to them, on the basis of vandalism. The cartoons, even if they are offensive, are indeed highly relevant material, and removing them without inserting a link can be considered a deliberate attempt to reduce the quality of the encyclopedia. But I strongly disagree, that replacing the cartoons with a link to them, is vandalism, because the motivation of those, who do so, is not to reduce the quality. Instead those who do so (incl. myself) do in fact want to increase the quality of the article, because they think, that an article on a controvery needs to have editors on both sides of this controversy. The current state of this article and the editors backing it, already drove away resp. banned countless editors, who could have added valuable information regarding the muslim POV on this issue. As if common anti-islam bias among the editors weren't enough, even administrators, who outed themselves as free speech extremists on the Image-Display talk page, which has been created for this content dispute, abuse their administrator privilege by simply blocking editors they disagree with. -- Raphael

On 5/5/06, Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at> wrote: I believe you. Hmm, to play devil's advocate, how would you feel if someone deleted a hard-core pornographic image, and didn't replace it with a link? I doubt you would call it vandalism. I believe that most (some?) Muslims find these cartoons extremely offensive, so it's not surprising that they would remove them without replacing them with a link. It's a fine line between blocking an editor you disagree with personally, and blocking an editor who behaves in a way inconsistent with the culture-by-default of the project, one that you share. English Wikipedia is purely and simply, generally sympathetic to an American point of view. The Arabic Wikipedia is probably more sympathetic to a Muslim point of view. I can't read Arabic, so I can't really check, but it seems that the Arabic Wikipedia for example would not have these links. I notice very quickly for example that [[Swimming]] and [[Dancing]] on the English Wikipedia show women with bare arms. The corresponding articles on the Arabic Wikipedia do not. Obviously I'm drawing big conclusions from very little data, and would appreciate confirmation from anyone familiar with the Arabic Wikipedia. Steve

"Raphael Wegmann" wrote Well, I think you may still be missing the key distinction. Systematic bias: this means the kind of thing that is talked about, generally, in discussions of 'media bias'. I happen to think that the whole 'media bias' debate is a serious dumbing down of political discussion: as if all that mattered was to establish that one kind of media is 'propaganda', and another is 'truth-telling'. But, in effect, systematic bias means something like a propagandistic, party line effect on content. As I have said, this is unacceptable under NPOV, article by article. Whether what Steve writes is true or not, that would contradict fundamental policy. Systemic bias is something else. For example if we have more males than females editing WP, which is likely, then we get more coverage of traditional male-interest things than traditional female-interest things. Our discussion of haute couture fashion supposedly reflects that. (I find that much easier to believe than what Steve says.) It has nothing to do with whether people are editing to make a propaganda point. Since on a wiki, what it written reflects ultimately the community writing it, there is no obvious policy such as NPOV that is effective. Charles

On Fri, 5 May 2006 13:41:58 +0200, you wrote: I kind of agree, but only to this extent: the reader of an article on a porn "star" is unlikely to be looking for a neutral analysis of the star's life and work, and if they are they are probably going to be disappointed. A reader of the article on the cartoons might reasonably be expected to be looking for a balanced view of the controversy. Most porn articles I've seen link to the subject's website, generally that is the sole "reliable" source of information in the entire article, and most of the pictures used on the articles are asserted fair use, very few are free or released by provable authority. So I personally would not include the cartoons in the article, because they are considered offensive by many of the potential readers and that will colour their view of the neutrality of the article, but undoubtedly would link to them since the whole issue makes little (or at least much less) sense if you've not seen them. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On Fri, 05 May 2006 14:29:35 +0200, you wrote: And the solution is discussion not edit-warring. HTH. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On 5/8/06, Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at> wrote: Well it can - but I tend to consider most reverts a form of edit warring. If you revert because the person vandalised, you know they were wrong, or you know for sure that you know the context of the article a lot better than them, that's one thing. If you revert because you disagree with them as an equal, you're edit warring. But I'm trolling. Steve

Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote: Many editors think that numerical supermajority equals consensus (it doesn't). Consensus is strictly reached only when all concerned have accepted a position. 30 image removals per week clearly shows that no consensus has been reached, this is what I know. Well, I don't think so. Please look again at Talk:Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy/Arguments/Image-Display I've been responsive to almost all arguments stated, leaving out only personal attacks. lG. -- Raphael

"Raphael Wegmann" wrote No, that is 'unanimity'. Here on Wikipedia this has never been the definition used of 'consensus'. No one voice has a veto, when it comes to understanding whether there is a consensus view. Numerically consensus is something like 80% approval, but of course a purely numerical criterion is not useful. Charles