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8289 discussions

None
by None 11 May '21

11 May '21

projects specific to individual languages and nationalities. 2. The procedural improvements I propose should be obvious from what I consider to be problem areas.

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None
by None 11 May '21

11 May '21

project of building a universal WikiWiki-based GFDL encyclopedia is what I care about. Obviously, I think Wikipedia(TM, R, All Rights Reversed, etc.) is the best-of-breed implementation of the project, at least for the English language (with the best logo, too). And if we all think of the project in these broad terms, then our particular implementation will generally win out; embrace and extend. Then again, if you want to do the scutwork of competing with EL instead of working them back into the fold, then who am I to stop you? (Answer: no-one.) Just seems like there are better things to do.

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by None 11 May '21

11 May '21

Arts and Crafts Movement, Mouthpiece, Ununennium, which led to boilerplate entries on the rest of the undiscovered Unun elements, which were immediately hopped up by Vicki Rosenzweig; Camp; Undocumented feature To me, the votes for deletion page is a constrained Recent Changes, where I am reminded of things I might contribute on, but would not have thought of on my own. Every one of these was a really poor stub. Every one is now a pretty good stub. I call that progress. But they wouldn't be there at all if I hadn't been prompted by the Votes for Deletion page. Tom Parmenter Ortolan88

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None
by None 11 May '21

11 May '21

has denied that the Jews deserved it. He may have been simply (in his view, not mine) taking what he felt was the appropriate action for the future benefit of the German Genome, Germany (the nation, country, or both?) or the anticipated future glory of the 3rd Reich. "Collateral damage." German Jews may have simply been standing or living in the wrong spot. This could be similar to the prevailing views American Indians encountered when U.S. Citizens wanted their land. Likewise the Japanese interned in California during World War II lost a lot of economic assets but who (as Jimbo has pointed out), were not exterminated in mass, although some died in the camps. A lot of them ended up in Idaho and Eastern Oregon creating new farms, their confiscated lands in California were never returned. Likewise, the 19 terrorists involved in 9/11 presumably felt the "innocent victims" were either acceptable "collateral damage" or "deserved" what they got. IIRC, some of them left messages implying that they thought Allah would approve of their actions. If this is the case then this is a fact suitable for presentation within an NPOV summary of the 9/11 incident and subsequent events. An accurate presentation of facts involved in history is going to require the presentation of various peoples views, when they are known, can be determined or possibly estimated with any reliability. Stating they are "offensive" and refusing to explore the details of the event merely allows similar incidents in the future via ignorance as well as design. Such as the current internment of non U.S. Arabs (and U.S. Citizens of Arabic descent? I have not been following this closely) picked up for questioning in the U.S. Personally I can see no justification for this in U.S. law yet they have been repeatedly denied any relief by the U.S. courts. Such as holding "terrorists" as POWs to claim that no trial is appropriate or required while claiming the Geneva Conventions do not apply because the U.S. does not recognize the government it attacked. The U.S. has never accepted other countries allegations that our soldiers are terrorists or war criminals. Very convenient that Al Quada troops captured in Afghanistan turn out to be "terrorists" with no rights requiring no trial as long as they are not detained on U.S. soil. Very convenient that Quantico is not U.S. soil (as Cuba as been alleging for decades) but is merely controlled by the U.S. military. The Holocaust was deserved in the same sense that people camped in the wrong spot in the promised land aproximately 40 years after the Jewish exodus from Egypt deserved what they got. Somebody decided destiny was on their side and wanted somebody else's assets or needed a scapegoat or whatever. It seems to me that in history, conflicts, etc. that the losers (victims) typically feel this was undeserved while the victors seem to have ways to feel it was justified or they (losers) deserved it. Thus deserved and not deserved would seem to be inherently biased positions. I think that we should simply state what happened and who believed what (or state what they claim to have believed or what they wrote down as their beliefs and supporting and conflicting evidence, etc. etc.) and let the future readers decide for themselves what is "obvious" and "offensive". I hope this clarifies matters regarding my personal opinions and philosophies, which in my view should be irrelevent to a discussion of "NPOV" policy, since you seem to feel they may be relevant. If the fact that I do not view Jewish lives as inherently more valuable than other human lives (or discussion of events surrounding their death inherently "offensive") "offends" you or others then I feel that this is unfortunate. I hope we can find a way to coexist relatively peacefully despite this little apparent or alleged (By you, me, or someone else? I seem to have lost track.) character flaw of mine. Regards, Mike Irwin

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None
by None 11 May '21

11 May '21

non-Jews towards Jews, with a great many of them directly caused by NSDAP propaganda (and the whole Jews killed Jesus thing quite common in both the Catholic and Lutheran churches of the time). I'm all for NPOV, but isn't part of the NPOV credo that minority views that confound reality don't get included? There is a Flat Earth society, but we don't mention them in the article about Copernicus' theory as having a valid minority viewpoint. In the case of the Holocaust, there is a fairly large minority world-wide of people who deny the Holocaust. I am on an educator listserve where a teacher SE Asia asked how to deal with the fact that most of her high school students really thought the Nazi flag was cool and whose general impression of Hitler was that he'd been a good leader for the German people. Most had not heard of the Holocaust, and those who did thought reports were exaggerated. Clearly, westerners are more focused on the European Theater in WWII and the holocaust because it directly affected our own history more dramatically. Still I would hate to think that, in the cause of NPOV, we put out articles that were misleading. I'll stop preaching for the moment. Jules Regards, Julie Hofmann Kemp 253-638-1944 206-310-3461 ------=_NextPart_000_0011_01C25059.E70681F0 Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV=3D"Content-Type" CONTENT=3D"text/html; = charset=3Dus-ascii"> <META NAME=3D"Generator" CONTENT=3D"MS Exchange Server version = 6.0.4630.0"> <TITLE>Re: Helga again</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY>  Jimmy Wales = said: I think we could say: "Tensions = between Jews and non-Jews in Germany had been growing for several years, = as evidenced by thus and such actual facts that actually happened." = -- Jimmy, even that kind of implies a = some kind of mutual antagonism -- From everything I've read, the = tensions were almost entirely  created by non-Jews towards Jews, = with a great many of them directly caused by NSDAP propaganda (and the = whole Jews killed Jesus thing quite common in both the Catholic and = Lutheran churches of the time).   I'm all for NPOV, but isn't = part of the NPOV credo that minority views that confound reality don't = get included?  There is a Flat Earth society, but we don't mention = them in the article about Copernicus' theory as having a valid minority = viewpoint. In the case of the Holocaust, there is = a fairly large minority world-wide of people who deny the = Holocaust.  I am on an educator listserve where a teacher SE Asia = asked how to deal with the fact that most of her high school students = really thought the Nazi flag was cool and whose general impression of = Hitler was that he'd been a good leader for the German people.  = Most had not heard of the Holocaust, and those who did thought reports = were exaggerated.  Clearly, westerners are more focused on the = European Theater in WWII and the holocaust because it directly affected = our own history more dramatically.  Still I would hate to think = that, in the cause of NPOV, we put out articles that were = misleading. I'll stop preaching for the = moment… Jules Regards, Julie Hofmann Kemp = 253-638-1944 206-310-3461 </BODY> </HTML> ------=_NextPart_000_0011_01C25059.E70681F0--

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None
by None 11 May '21

11 May '21

referred to: "Wikipedia is a collaborative project, with a common goal shared by its creators and most participants: Our goal with Wikipedia is to create a free encyclopedia--indeed, the largest encyclopedia in history, both in terms of breadth and in terms of depth. We also want Wikipedia to become a reliable resource." I am having some trouble understanding how we are to reconcile breadth, depth, and reliability with concise "NPOV" summaries of major areas of human activities. I can understand that we might want all major initial articles or subjects to start with an "NPOV" summary and then get more specialized as greater depth and detailed logical arguments or explanations are provided in linked sub articles. > > > Communism was certainly a great experiment, the results of which generated > > a great deal of knowledge, there is no point at all in throwing the > > knowledge away. > > I'm not saying that we should throw this knowledge away. I am just questioning: > 1. How much of it should be on Wikipedia, and All of it that someone chooses to include which can be edited into an NPOV presentation to interested readers? > 2. If it should be on Wikipedia, where Good question. I propose we use hiearchies starting with the most general overviews and link to greater depth, breadth, and detail. This would imply that "Marxist view of Freedom" would be linked from somewhere under the "Freedom" hiearchy as well as from anywhere someone wants to reference the Marxist view of freedom rather than the "American blue collar union view of Freedom" (Collective bargaining without fear of assault or retaliation) or the "Enron view of Freedom to manipulate electricity futures markets" (Executives should not be accountable or restricted). > > What I was arguing was that the answer on question 2 should be "either on > the page on Marxism or on the subject page, NOT on a page called 'Marxist > view of <subject>'". The Marxist.org "Freedom" glossary article is quite lengthy and detailed with a lot of nuances. It is difficult for me to see how we could include all nuances, add debunking or countering arguments, add other POVs properly labeled and transformed to facts of the form required by the NPOV and compress this all into a single NPOV article of suitable length for efficient serving to browser clients. It seems to me that we might end up with hundreds of pages called "Freedom from View X" before we get close to a complete NPOV treatment of the concept "Freedom". Each of these pages will need extensive linking to vague concepts and data such as Social Security and Trickle Down Reagonomics to support charges of freedom to starve or be taxed, inappropriately or appropriately according to some specific view. Where controversy exists various evidence and arguments for and against various positions must be described and attributed. The overview NPOV article "Freedom" is thus likely to require many iterations of editing as various more detailed views are created with augmenting details to categorize, summarize, and lead the reader to links providing the more detailed information as they become interested and choose to pursue specific topics. I agree that it may be possible to refactor these anticipated hundreds of pages of draft contributed material discussing "Freedom" as areas of agreement and disagreement are identified, clarified and suitably chunked in NPOV articles suitable for link referencing. Much of the refactored material might end up relinked away from the resulting article hiearchy of "Freedom" to history article hiearchies or special topics such as "Politics of the 20th Century" under the politics hiearchy or whatever. I also agree with you in doubting that much of it should merely be deleted or left out if a contributor is willing to write or edit it responsibly according to our published guidelines. In my view, this would be inherently non NPOV, approaching censorship or rewriting history via omission. This degenerates into a question of revision control. How do we manage draft material (in work or under construction) vs. properly presented NPOV material suitable for serving to the public at large as "reliable", in depth, broad treatment of available human information or knowledge. Detailed POVs properly labeled (thus fullfilling the NPOV requirement) could be left as orphans, linked into lists of labeled POV, or linked into NPOV articles as pertient labeled POV until they can worked over sufficiently by diverse contributing editors. Regards, Mike Irwin

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None
by None 11 May '21

11 May '21

Freedom and Negative Freedom:" "Negative freedom means the lack of forces which prevent an individual from doing whatever they want; Positive freedom is the capacity of a person to determine the best course of action and the existence of opportunities for them to realise their full potential. The overwhelmingly dominant tendency in the history of bourgeois society has been to open up negative freedom, by removing feudal and other reactionary constraints on freedom of action. ..." I doubt the victims of genocide wanted to die, so clearly they were not granted "negative freedom" to avoid being killed. As I understand the article "negative freedoms" appear to be freedom from coercion. This was supposed to be one of the first gains of the social evolution Marx was espousing. The KGB, Red Army, and others seemed to apply plenty of coercion. Then their empire collapsed. Just as Marx predicted for coercive capitalistic societies. Perhaps the issue is not the organization of the means of production but the coercion applied to create the organization. Early capitalism was pretty coercive, much less so now in the U.S. with mature regulatory processes in place to "restrict" everyone except Microsoft and other Bush Buddies. China is a bit more perplexing. Are the Chinese people gaining more "negative freedoms" relative to where they started when the Communist Party took over? > > My objection is that these articles are extremely and irreparably > NPOV. Well they are certainly written from a Marxist viewpoint. The terms seem fairly precisely defined and used. Many of the assertions and assumptions are explicitly stated. To me this would seem easier material to repair than much of what we produce as a first draft to start with ourselves. The "errors" are fairly obvious as they clash with our own bias. <snip> regards, Mike Irwin

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by None 11 May '21

11 May '21

both statements quoted above are equal. They are both expressions of their ideosyncratic points of view. Now, Jimbo and I might both think Marxist doctrine suitable for fertilizing lawns; while nearly all Wikipedians (but me) might think that Unificationist doctrine is great for wrapping fish -- but, each of the statements above is written from the NPOV. (I won't deny that I would LIKE to get some endorsment of my church's views, but ...) Ed Poor (member of Unification Church since 1977)

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by None 11 May '21

11 May '21

Information on contributing to the current events page "Current events is not a news page. We shouldn't be in the business of writing articles about breaking news stories, unless indeed we can be very confident, as in the case of the September 11 attacks, that in the future there will be a significant call for an encyclopedia article on that topic. One very significant danger is that news articles must be kept current in order to remain accurate. Wikipedians might begin a news article and then simply lose interest in the topic, whereupon the article becomes inaccurate. In short, we aren't set up to be an amateur news organization, and we shouldn't try to compete with professional news organizations." In this case the significance of the stock market downturn is not yet determined; the invasion may not happen at all but is sure to be significant when it does. It is pretty clear that an article that does doesn't attract participation is a loser. If an article does attact significant participation it provides a record of contemporary views of the event. I think any event might be mentioned in current events with links to existing or proposed background articles. The event itself might not be a worthy article. Fred Bauder

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None
by None 11 May '21

11 May '21

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