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
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
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
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<P><FONT COLOR=3D"#008000" FACE=3D"Comic Sans MS">Jimmy Wales =
said:</FONT>
<BR><FONT FACE=3D"Times New Roman">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." =
</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE=3D"Times New Roman">-- 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.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE=3D"Times New Roman">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.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE=3D"Times New Roman">I'll stop preaching for the =
moment…</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT FACE=3D"Times New Roman">Jules</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT COLOR=3D"#008080" FACE=3D"Comic Sans MS">Regards, </FONT>
</P>
<BR>
<P><FONT COLOR=3D"#008080" FACE=3D"Comic Sans MS">Julie Hofmann Kemp =
</FONT>
<BR><FONT COLOR=3D"#008080" FACE=3D"Comic Sans MS">253-638-1944</FONT>
<BR><FONT COLOR=3D"#008080" FACE=3D"Comic Sans MS">206-310-3461</FONT>
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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
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
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)
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
> Wikipedia Plugin
> This plugin will give you integrated access to Wikipedia, an incredible, free encyclopedia.
> Downloads: Linux Intel RPM. Please select a mirror:
> USA1 - USA2 - EU
The mirror links show the version as xxxx1.0.2.1.i386.rpm so apparently
it is only available on linux.
Excellent PR! :)
Regards,
mirwin
we use it? Because we want a mark-up that is easy to read, easy to
understand, easy to type and non-intimidating for people who know next to
nothing about HTML. When people see lots of nested tags such as on
http://www.wikipedia.com/w/wiki.phtml?title=Duesseldorf&oldid=131461
they are not likely to add anything to it. On this page the mark-up has been
more wikified and if you now look in its edit page you will see a text that
is a lot more editor-friendly.
-- Jan Hidders