I notice a lot of pages of countries which reply on information from the CIA factsbook include information US diplomatic representation to that country and that country's diplomatic representation to the US. Two things strike me:
1. That sort of information changes very quickly, much quicker than details about who is in government, etc, because diplomatic postings are regularly changed. So it is something that can very very easily be out of date even when being put on wiki, or within a small time afterwards.
2. It hardly creates a fair and balanced article if its focuses exclusively on issues to do with that country's diplomatic relationship with the US. Is there a single article on wiki that mentions with the British ambassador is to a country and what the UK embassy address is? What about the Italian Ambassador? Brazilian ambassador? Irish ambassador? Rwandan ambassador, etc. It all adds a regrettable and unnecessary degree of americo-centrism to articles.
Given this fact, and that the information is likely to change rapidly, is it not time that such unnecessary and americo-centrist information was left out? The entire world doesn't need to know who the US ambassador to Germany is, or who the Germany ambassador to the US is, do they?
If it is thought worth keeping, it should all be moved to a specific article on [[United States Embassies and Ambassadors]] and [[International Ambassadors to the United States]]. There it can be easily updated and avoids making articles appear too americocentric.
JT
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Je Merkredo 28 Majo 2003 20:53, james duffy skribis:
I notice a lot of pages of countries which reply on information from the CIA factsbook include information US diplomatic representation to that country and that country's diplomatic representation to the US.
There was discussion on talk pages (I don't remember where) sometime last year in which it was agreed to take those out. Presumably they didn't all get done at the time; if you see more, please fix them up.
- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
On Wed, 28 May 2003, Brion Vibber wrote:
Je Merkredo 28 Majo 2003 20:53, james duffy skribis:
I notice a lot of pages of countries which reply on information from the CIA factsbook include information US diplomatic representation to that country and that country's diplomatic representation to the US.
There was discussion on talk pages (I don't remember where) sometime last year in which it was agreed to take those out. Presumably they didn't all get done at the time; if you see more, please fix them up.
No way! There is no reason why information on diplomatic representation should be taken out of the Wikipedia. Of course we shouldn't have just that relating to the US, but we should have it for all countries. Clearly this can't all go in main country articles, because it would become unwieldy, but it should be moved to pages specifically about diplomatic representation.
[[Ambassadors from the United States]] and [[Ambassadors to the United States]] are quite likely the pages you want. The latter doesn't exist yet, and both may need renaming, but there is no reason why they could not hold the information in question. There is no reason to remove such information altogether.
Oliver
+-------------------------------------------+ | Oliver Pereira | | Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science | | University of Southampton | | omp199@ecs.soton.ac.uk | +-------------------------------------------+
Oliver Pereira wrote:
[[Ambassadors from the United States]] and [[Ambassadors to the United States]] are quite likely the pages you want. The latter doesn't exist yet, and both may need renaming, but there is no reason why they could not hold the information in question. There is no reason to remove such information altogether.
Well, one reason I can think of is simple time constraints. Yes, it would be better to move this fast-obsolete and not-very-helpful information out of the main country articles and into some other location, but if the people who want to do it don't feel like writing all new articles on American diplomatic representation, it could still be better to remove it.
I'm usually a 'completionist' not a 'deletionist' but in some cases, the work to continue including and updating some information probably isn't the best use of our time.
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Oliver Pereira wrote:
[[Ambassadors from the United States]] and [[Ambassadors to the United States]] are quite likely the pages you want. The latter doesn't exist yet, and both may need renaming, but there is no reason why they could not hold the information in question. There is no reason to remove such information altogether.
I'm usually a 'completionist' not a 'deletionist' but in some cases, the work to continue including and updating some information probably isn't the best use of our time.
I too believe in a completionist philosophy. More than a very small number of people on an ambassador list may be enough to move it into a pathetic little stub of its own. Sooner or later somebody will find that stub, have pity on it, and improve it. Updates will work in a similar way.
One difference that we have from a paper encyclopedia is we cannot apply obsolescence as evenly as they do. Everything on the 1911 EB is now uniformly 92 years old. We have and can maintain variable obsolescence. We may at some point have a five year old list of US ambasadors, but we CAN update it when somebody (perhaps some newby) is so inclined. I agree that for most of us updating this kind of information is not the best use of our time, but this is a personal choice. It may be absolutely true for you and me, and probably true for most experienced Wikipedians. We do have the principle of "always leave something undone".
One suggestion that I would have for people inclined to work on ambassador lists, is that they should try to show appointment dates This will always leave an at-a-glance impression of just how obsolete an article is.
Ec
Does anyone know if the US State Department website has a list of all of its ambassadors that we can either steal^H^H^H^H^Hborrow or link to?
Zoe
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--- james duffy jtdirl@hotmail.com wrote:
Is
there a single article on wiki that mentions with the British ambassador is to a country and what the UK embassy address is? What about the Italian Ambassador? Brazilian ambassador? Irish ambassador? Rwandan ambassador, etc. It all adds a regrettable and unnecessary degree of americo-centrism to articles.
We keep having this discussion and I keep asking why we would rather delete something that discusses America instead of adding something that discusses other countries, but I already know the answer to that, so there's no point in my even bringing it up again.
There is an article whose name escapes me which has a list of all of the ambassadors from other countries to Canada.
Zoe
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Je Ĵaŭdo 29 Majo 2003 17:34, Zoe skribis:
We keep having this discussion and I keep asking why we would rather delete something that discusses America instead of adding something that discusses other countries, but I already know the answer to that, so there's no point in my even bringing it up again.
Because it's not very informative, changes with little notice (therefore will likely not be maintained well), and would probably be better served by linking to the embassies' home pages which will have more information?
- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Je Ĵa�­do 29 Majo 2003 17:34, Zoe skribis:
We keep having this discussion and I keep asking why we would rather delete something that discusses America instead of adding something that discusses other countries, but I already know the answer to that, so there's no point in my even bringing it up again.
Because it's not very informative, changes with little notice (therefore will likely not be maintained well), and would probably be better served by linking to the embassies' home pages which will have more information?
I still think it's bad to delete npov content, even if it's incomplete.
--littleDan
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