James-
this does not belong on wikipedia-l. I have therefore copied it to wikien-l, and all replies should go there.
- There was an edit war on the "Mother Teresa" page after you moved away
about 20K of text to a separate "criticism" page in clear violation of our neutrality policy, which states that no preference should be given to any side.
Not so. NPOV requires balence in content. The critique in such detail clearly violated wikipedia's NPOV policy. It doesn't matter if it was 70% glorification or 70% demonisation of MT or anyone else. Making an article overwhelmingly one sided where the vast majority of the text is putting forward one view, expecially when when the text isn't about the person the article is about at all but about her religious order, is unambiguously against NPOV. I did not remove the criticism. I put it up front in the opening paragraph. I moved the main complex text to a link article, linked /in/ the text of the article, and was in the process of summarising the criticism in a couple of paragraphs, so that the information would be there, expressed unambiguously, without turning the entire article on Mother Teresa into 'Christopher Hitchens on Mother Teresa's order and how they washed their bed linen and used needles', which is what chunks of the stuff you added in was about. Doing that makes perfect sense and absolutely in keeping with wikipedia's 'be bold' editing policy. But your response was to /immediately/ place the link article on the VfD page, dump the text and keep reverting the article back to the over long, badly written, biased and frequently off-topic article in place of a properly written, NPOV, balanced piece that covered the pluses and minuses of MT without letting one side, /either/ side, dominate. That is the basic definition of NPOV.
- I have warned you repeatedly not to make any substantial changes to the
article while the major issue of whether the text was to be moved to a separate page was not settled. You ignored these warnings and pushed forward to edit the text, including your movement of 20K of text to a separate page, and complain that these edits were reverted together. This is simply disingenuous and you know it.
Again, not so. All I did was try to NPOV a POV mess of an article. Most (but not all) of the problem was with that 20K text, which did not belong there, and you know it.
- A sysop protected the page in an attempt to cool down the edit war.
This was a largely symbolic gesture since we are both sysops, but we chose not to edit the page while it was protected. However, this precluded non- sysops who had announced that they wanted to make edits to the page from doing so. To prevent this unfortunate situation, I unprotected the page with the comment:
"removing protection for now (I was involved so I won't edit for another few hours if Jtdirl won't, but others should be able to)"I did not edit the page for the next few hours and nor did you,
You know I am not on during the daytime. So I didn't have a choice, just came back to find you were editing away again, having unprotected a protected page in clear breach of sysop rules.
You moved virtually all the criticisms of Mother Teresa to a separate page without discussing this on the talk page first. Three users (myself, Bryan and Jiang) disagreed with this. I and Bryan Derksen reverted your changes. It might be argued that it would have been "wiser" to just wait a day or two and then address the matter again, but that is clearly wrong -- had we done so, you would have reorganized the entire article(s) according to your idea of NPOV, making it very difficult to reach any kind of consensus on the matter.
No I didn't. I moved a body of text, much of which was about her order, not about her, to a separate article and attempted to put a shorter summary in. Others on the page had already complained about what you had added in but you went ahead regardless.
In addition to that, you continue to play your usual games, which consist of
- personal attacks (always singling out one contributor, even though
several users have expressed disagreement with your actions)
I have to say at this point that a ban of Jtdirl is no longer out of the question for me.Eloquence 22:07, Oct 20, 2003 (UTC)
Given that he is editing a page about a person that is supposedly all about love, he carries a great deal of hate inside him.
You can play up your oh-so-critical "lapsed Catholic" attitude as much as you want
Here you have Jtdirl, the valiant defender of truth and neutrality who makes all people happy and contented.
I have big doubts that you would engage in an edit war over Sun Myung Moon, but of course with your proven pro-Catholic bias it seems obvious that you would want to defend the fiction that has been built around Mother Teresa, without any substantial arguments to support your edits.
Who made all those attacks, Eric?
- false accusations of abusive behavior
And what were those comments above then?
- disingenuous tactics like your behavior in the edit war, piling changes
upon changes to bully your way through
- making false claims (e.g. repeatedly claiming that the criticism section
was merely based on "a single TV show", whereas I have shown you the multitude of sources on which it was based, including several books and newspaper articles and an editorial in "The Lancet")
All of which I mentioned in the short summary which you called censorship.
I chose to ignore your continuous stream of attacks against me, but other users would not have shown the same amount of patience and be driven away by your behavior, which resembles that of a schoolyard bully.
What was that again about personal attacks?
In spite of this unacceptable behavior on your part, I have repeatedly offered to seek a cooperative, consensual solution for the alleged or real NPOV problems on the page in question. In fact, I was working on reaching a consensus with Bryan and other contributors while you continued reverting to your style. Everyone can see this by taking a look at [[Talk:Mother Teresa]].
It is time for you to stop playing strategic games against other contributors, and to start working in the spirit of mutual cooperation. Now is a good moment to do so -- I fully approve of your recent edits of the article (provided you haven't again started moving away the criticism section).
So why then accuse me of a 'pro-catholic bias' and censoring criticism of MT, when I was doing nothing of the sort, merely trying to NPOV an article and give stuff not about MT its own article?
Yet you continue your bullying tactics against other contributors. You do not want peaceful cooperation, you want to pick fights and win. That is not how Wikipedia works.
Which is why, I suppose, every edit I made for ages tonight was screwed around when you went in and began changing past tense to present tense while I was trying to save NPOV changes. So much for co-operation. And throwing accusations of 'pro-catholic bias' really is constructive and non-bullying, I suppose?
I can and will work with you on this article, provided you make a serious commitment to seeking consensus on your changes.
Others users earlier criticised your constant adding in of more and more detractors' claims and said that it unbalanced the article. Here and elsewhere your usual approach has been 'be bold' when you think you can get away with it, cry 'consensus' when someone stops you.
That cannot always be done, of course, but there are reasonable courses of actions in the cases where it can't (act based on established precedent, hold a vote, ask Jimbo etc.). Just trying to get "your way or the highway" will not lead to any kind of solution.
More threats from 'The User Who Does Not Make Threats', eh?
So here's my offer: Make the changes to the criticism section you find important. I will edit the parts which I don't like and if we can't agree, we'll go to the talk page. Once the criticism section is edited, we will take a look at the entire article and if it is too long (32K), we will summarize individual sections and split them away, regardless of their content. If it is still below that size, we won't do that. If the criticism section is still too dominant, we will together try to expand the other sections of the article. How about some wiki-cooperation for a change?
I have co-operated with many people on wikipedia. The only fights I have had here in ages have been with you, when you tried to POV not one but a series of articles on religion. Each time you accused me of a 'pro-catholic bias'. Others said the edits were perfectly NPOV. Bias has no place in a wikipedia article, whether it is bias for or against RCism, protestantism, Islam, the Jewish faith, etc. How is it that it is your edits on religious matters that draw criticism from people and accusations of bias.
You are perfectly entitled to hold humanist views and be critical of organised religion, but what you cannot do is go around turning articles into polemics for your opinion. I have been accused of bias for and against Australian republicanism, the British monarchy, Israel, communism, etc often simultaneously, for standing up to both sides and saying 'that is not NPOV'. I have turned religious articles that were seen as unsalvageable into articles that were praised as NPOV. What makes you think I want to turn an article on Mother Teresa into a POV polemic. I don't. If I was trying to 'silence the facts' I would have simply deleted them, not moved them up to the opening paragraph and given them their own article. But I am sick and tired of wild accusations of 'pro-catholic bias' for trying to do a professional editing job on sloppily written one sided articles, whether they are pro- or anti- catholic, pro- or anti- MT.
On this article, comments made on your massive add-in include
In this article, 1/3 described her life and work, and 2/3 described detractor's claims. And this is for someone who won the Nobel Prize for Peace. Is this NPOV? --Kaihsu 16:35, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Why is there such a long DIATRIBE against this person in an aricle which is supposed to have a neutral POV? The criticisms are written with such bias that even as a stand-alone article it currently violates NPOV.205.188.208.72 21:38, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I think the best solution would be to summarize the controversies here, and move the whole text to another article. This one has gotten way too long in my opinion. Dori 19:06, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Who said anything about hiding. Like most other people, I see an article that long (which looks more like a book report) and I shy away. I said summarize and link to the long article. If you want to write your PhD thesis here, then go ahead. Dori 21:43, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)
In moving the text, I was doing no more than reflecting the will of those users you ignored and told " It is not a place for apologetics" as if they too were part of some big pro-catholic conspiracy to stop you telling 'the truth'. If you want to lecture people on NPOV, start practising it. If you want to accuse everyone else of bias, start looking just how neutral /you/ are in your edits, and just how many facts as opposed to opinions you have. And don't lecture everyone else on your behaviour when your approach is to break sysop rules if you can't get your own way, accuse everyone else of bias if you can't get your own way, and throw around POV allegations like confetti against those trying to fix a poorly written article that veers between glorification and demonisation of the subject and misses NPOV by a mile.
JT
_________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Not so. NPOV requires balence in content. The critique in such detail clearly violated wikipedia's NPOV policy. It doesn't matter if it was 70% glorification or 70% demonisation of MT or anyone else. Making an article overwhelmingly one sided where the vast majority of the text is putting forward one view [...]
JT, Eric, everyone, this doesn't belong here; please see my comments on the talk page for the Mother Teresa article. I suggest that the discussion be continued there, as I note in those comments.
Louis
On Mon, 20 Oct 2003, Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
Not so. NPOV requires balence in content. The critique in such detail clearly violated wikipedia's NPOV policy. It doesn't matter if it was 70% glorification or 70% demonisation of MT or anyone else. Making an article overwhelmingly one sided where the vast majority of the text is putting forward one view [...]
JT, Eric, everyone, this doesn't belong here; please see my comments on the talk page for the Mother Teresa article. I suggest that the discussion be continued there, as I note in those comments.
Yes, just put it back on the page. What about the basic question of whether Wikipedia should be NPOV, and how we do that? Maybe we should finally stop circumventing that question and actually discuss it. Would be useful, I'd say.
Andre Engels
Yes, just put it back on the page. What about the basic question of whether Wikipedia should be NPOV, and how we do that? Maybe we should finally stop circumventing that question and actually discuss it. Would be useful, I'd say.
Andre Engels
This article, Mother Teresa, does cry out for segregation of critical views from positive views as we seem rather mean spirited to be bringing up all the uncomfortable facts (even God must have been unaware of them or she would never have been authorized to perform miracles) just as the Catholic community is celebrating a new saint. But I note the John Paul Jones article effectively debunks an American secular saint.
This could be done in a separate article, or in a separate section within the article. Interspersed throughout the article it definitely breaks the spell, aura of holiness.
Fred
At 06:28 AM 10/21/03 -0600, Fred Bauder wrote:
Yes, just put it back on the page. What about the basic question of whether Wikipedia should be NPOV, and how we do that? Maybe we should finally stop circumventing that question and actually discuss it. Would be useful, I'd say.
Andre Engels
This article, Mother Teresa, does cry out for segregation of critical views from positive views as we seem rather mean spirited to be bringing up all the uncomfortable facts (even God must have been unaware of them or she would never have been authorized to perform miracles) just as the Catholic community is celebrating a new saint. But I note the John Paul Jones article effectively debunks an American secular saint.
You're assuming the conclusion here: namely, that (a) there is a God, who (b) has given the Catholic Church the ability to identify saints, and (c) that said church never makes mistakes.
If, conversely, the criticisms of Mother Theresa are valid (which I think they are, but that's open to debate), and the Catholic church has declared her to be a saint (a fact), that leads to questions about what beatification means.
This could be done in a separate article, or in a separate section within the article. Interspersed throughout the article it definitely breaks the spell, aura of holiness.
Wikipedia's job is not to create an aura of holiness. We're an encyclopedia.
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
Wikipedia's job is not to create an aura of holiness. We're an encyclopedia.
That's right.
It should go without saying that it's also not our job to attack religious figures and so on.
--Jimbo
--- Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
This article, Mother Teresa, does cry out for segregation of critical views from positive views as we seem rather mean spirited to be bringing up all the uncomfortable facts (even God must have been unaware of them or she would never have been authorized to perform miracles) just as the Catholic community is celebrating a new saint. But I note the John Paul Jones article effectively debunks an American secular saint.
It may be that Eriks got an anti-Catholic gripe going --who doesnt. But Fred is exactly right --and the issue is: Who is Mother Teresa? Is she on her way to being a saint, or a contemporary person, for whom an encyclopedia article can write up all kinds of dirt on her.
We can also ask: "Who *was* Mother Teresa?" but this is the controversy --Catholics think of her as being an "is" while non-Catholics will think of her as a "was."
Which takes precedence? Neither. This is an encyclopedia -- we use [[news style]] and that neutral point of view thing...
Its quite easy to simply describe her humanist accomplishments in a *secular, *encyclopedic, way -- and then to treat how Catholics revere her, and others hate her --presumably for her supposedly making the Catholic Church look good somewhat --(we can't have that.)
~S~
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com
Stevertigo-
It may be that Eriks got an anti-Catholic gripe going --who doesnt.
In spite of repeated charges to this effect, there has never been any substantial NPOV criticism of the Mother Teresa article. Instead, some people have argued that 20K of criticism should be split away to a separate page. Fred argues that a splitup needs to be enforced to retain the "aura of holiness" around MT and that not doing so is "mean spirited". It's funny how this kind of pro-Catholic bias is considered acceptable by many.
All I want is for MT to be treated like any other person on Wikipedia. It is not our duty, moral or otherwise, to uphold any kind of fiction to avoid disturbing our readers. We may use some articles from them, but Wikipedia does not use the same editorial policies as the Catholic Encyclopedia. Our policy is NPOV, and that policy is applicable to all people, places and things.
Regards,
Erik
erik_moeller@gmx.de (Erik Moeller) writes:
Well, we're all anti-semites, don't you know...
All I want is for MT to be treated like any other person on Wikipedia. It is not our duty, moral or otherwise, to uphold any kind of fiction to avoid disturbing our readers.
I've no interest whatsoever in maintaining a Holy Aura around anyone, but I don't think the MT article, as it stands, does treat MT like anyone else. I also think, as it stands, it's a very, very poorly written article.
Essentially, an enormous amount (the vast majority of the article) is highly critical, based on the criticisms of three people: Hitchens, Shields and Chatterjee and a great deal of guilt-by-association (rather honestly so-titled).
I believe the length of discussion -- particularly the extensive passages of quotation is unecessary. A considerably shorter precis of the criticisms could easily be provided, along with pointers to the source article.
Certainly, the alleged abuses of the movement *must* be mentioned, and given some space, but there is really no need to bang on about it at such extraordinary and tedious length.
Gareth-
Essentially, an enormous amount (the vast majority of the article) is highly critical, based on the criticisms of three people: Hitchens, Shields and Chatterjee
These three people in turn cite others who have been critical (sometimes published in primary sources), such as Mary Louden (published in The Guardian), Lancet editor Robin Fox, the Stern report by W. Wüllenweber (which in turn cites other witnesses), a priest cited by Chatterjee, and so forth. The above paragraph is therefore a gross oversimplification of the actual content of the page.
and a great deal of guilt-by-association (rather honestly so-titled).
Actually, not such a great deal -- a single paragraph and two pictures.
I believe the length of discussion -- particularly the extensive passages of quotation is unecessary.
Then summarize the quotations. If you don't lose any valuable information in the process, this is certainly fine with me.
Certainly, the alleged abuses of the movement *must* be mentioned, and given some space, but there is really no need to bang on about it at such extraordinary and tedious length.
There is no size limit on Wikipedia. To remove useful information just because it is "tedious" would be disingenuous. Cutting down fluff and POV language which is inevitable when using direct quotes -- sure. Removing facts -- no way.
Regards,
Erik
erik_moeller@gmx.de (Erik Moeller) writes:
Cutting down fluff and POV language which is inevitable when using direct quotes -- sure. Removing facts -- no way.
Really? If I had verifiable facts (from a published Diary, say) that Tony Benn had toast and marmalade for breakfast on the 3rd of March, 1967, and added it to the article, that would be OK and -- how wiki is this -- *irremovable*.
What rubbish.
There is no size limit on Wikipedia. To remove useful information ...
At the third reiteration, the information ceases to be useful, or interesting. How many times do you wish to cite sources stating that the Missionaries Of Charity took in a lot of money and were pretty shifty about where it went?
This point is made about 5 times in the article, each time with a lengthy direct quotation from a different secondary source.
The section "Improper and undisclosed use of funds" could be precis'd into about 6 sentences and no useful information would be lost. Similarly, both lengthy quotations in "Secret Baptisms" could be summarised in about 40 words, including attributions.
As a bonus, neither section would then read like it was written by an 3rd grader with attention-deficit disorder.
On Tuesday 21 October 2003 03:18 pm, Gareth Owen wrote:
erik_moeller@gmx.de (Erik Moeller) writes:
Cutting down fluff and POV language which is inevitable when using direct quotes -- sure. Removing facts -- no way.
Really? If I had verifiable facts (from a published Diary, say) that Tony Benn had toast and marmalade for breakfast on the 3rd of March, 1967, and added it to the article, that would be OK and -- how wiki is this -- *irremovable*.
What rubbish.
I think Erik's intent was quite clearly to say that that no factual information pertinent to the subject should be removed, with which I agree. The example you cite is rubbish, not Erik's argument.
There is no size limit on Wikipedia. To remove useful information ...
At the third reiteration, the information ceases to be useful, or interesting. How many times do you wish to cite sources stating that the Missionaries Of Charity took in a lot of money and were pretty shifty about where it went?
If it is true, as you claim, that something is repeated three times, then surely the removal of two of those instances does not remove factual and pertinent information?
This point is made about 5 times in the article, each time with a lengthy direct quotation from a different secondary source.
The section "Improper and undisclosed use of funds" could be precis'd into about 6 sentences and no useful information would be lost. Similarly, both lengthy quotations in "Secret Baptisms" could be summarised in about 40 words, including attributions.
Then why don't you do it? If you think that something is wrong with the article you can change it. (Remember, this is a wiki)
As a bonus, neither section would then read like it was written by an 3rd grader with attention-deficit disorder.
Best, Sascha Noyes
Sascha Noyes sascha@pantropy.net writes:
I think Erik's intent was quite clearly to say that that no factual information pertinent to the subject should be removed, with which I agree.
Then he should say what he means, rather than spout inaccurate platitudes.
Then why don't you do it?
Because, as far as I was aware, the article is protected. And people who change Erik's edits, get threatened with banning.
If you think that something is wrong with the article you can change it. (Remember, this is a wiki)
Because life is too short to step into an edit war between competing zealots? Anyway, as a "proof of concept", I've precis'd the bank account info. I'd be interested to know what salient information I've removed...
Gareth-
Then why don't you do it?
Because, as far as I was aware, the article is protected.
It is not. I unprotected it to allow people like yourself to make changes while Jtdirl and I refrained from editing it.
And people who change Erik's edits, get threatened with banning.
That is incorrect.
Because life is too short to step into an edit war between competing zealots?
I am not a zealot. Personal attacks are unacceptable. Please desist.
Regards,
Erik
erik_moeller@gmx.de (Erik Moeller) writes:
Because life is too short to step into an edit war between competing zealots?
I am not a zealot. Personal attacks are unacceptable. Please desist.
Allow to rephrase: "Because life is too short to step into an edit war between two competing factions whose writing reads, to me, like the writing of zealots."
We are not trying Mother Theresa, so there's no need to write like a lawyer. If you don't think of yourself as "the case for the prosecution", you're writing might got give of the unjustified aura of zealotry.
--- Sascha Noyes sascha@pantropy.net wrote:
I think Erik's intent was quite clearly to say that that no factual information pertinent to the subject
should be
removed, with which I agree. The example you cite is rubbish, not Erik's
argument.
Well, lets not get confused:
(why is all this crud on the list anyway? Oh right --JT's whining to the list --two of them, no less)
The good cause of [[Wikipeida:Abundance and reduncancy]] --not removing valid material from an article -- has to be balanced with the state that the article is in.
It may be that there is enough for a controversy article. Whether that controversy material should be attached to mother teresa's name, or to the Church itself -- I cant say yet.
I would suggest removing it all -- allowing for a glowing review -- and then remove the POV from that. Deal with the aspect of Reverence as POV --and make that article NPOV. Keep all the controversial stuff in a subpage and deal with it when the article has developed. The proportion should be perhaps like the Chomsky article -- critics get paid to blabber -- so they could go on forever, and be quoted forever. Fuck them. Just keep this article about the person for now.
~S~
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com
Stevertigo-
I would suggest removing it all -- allowing for a glowing review -- and then remove the POV from that. Deal with the aspect of Reverence as POV --and make that article NPOV. Keep all the controversial stuff in a subpage
That would quite obviously be a gross violation of established neutrality principles. There is no reason to give undue preference to positive views about MT while stowing away the negative ones. Both are about the same person.
Regards,
Erik
On 21 Oct 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
Stevertigo-
I would suggest removing it all -- allowing for a glowing review -- and then remove the POV from that. Deal with the aspect of Reverence as POV --and make that article NPOV. Keep all the controversial stuff in a subpage
That would quite obviously be a gross violation of established neutrality principles. There is no reason to give undue preference to positive views about MT while stowing away the negative ones. Both are about the same person.
Nor is there reason to give undue preference to negative views about MT whether or not mentioning the positive ones as well.
Andre Engels
On Tue, 21 Oct 2003, Sascha Noyes wrote:
The section "Improper and undisclosed use of funds" could be precis'd into about 6 sentences and no useful information would be lost. Similarly, both lengthy quotations in "Secret Baptisms" could be summarised in about 40 words, including attributions.
Then why don't you do it? If you think that something is wrong with the article you can change it. (Remember, this is a wiki)
I would like to do it, but I already get mightily angry looking at this edit war from the outside. How much the more if I get habitually reverted myself?
I have no interest in getting part of an edit war. I have no interest in solving this dispute by seeing who has the longest breath. I don't know what I do want though...
Andre Engels
--- Gareth Owen wiki@gwowen.freeserve.co.uk wrote:
'Missionaries Of Charity took in a lot of money and
were pretty shifty about where it went?'
This point is made about 5 times in the article, each time with a lengthy direct quotation from a
different >secondary source.
I bet it could use another. ;-)
As a bonus, neither section would then read like it was written by an 3rd grader with attention-deficit
disorder.
"Your tomato wife asparagus is cabbage dead."
:D! Maybe this article chould be renamed :[[Mother Teresa:Angel of Mercy, or Undercover Embezzler-Vampire ? -You Decide]].
~S~ How would Internet-Encyclopedia handle this controversy?
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com
~S~ How would Internet-Encyclopedia handle this controversy?
The main article would be postive point of view, but note that there are criticisms and set them forth briefly. Criticisms, if set forth in detail, would be in an article entitled Mother Teresa:A critical view. That article would be required to note her beatification and probable sainthood and the basis therefore
Fred
Gareth-
Really? If I had verifiable facts (from a published Diary, say) that Tony Benn had toast and marmalade for breakfast on the 3rd of March, 1967, and added it to the article, that would be OK and -- how wiki is this -- *irremovable*.
That depends on whether the fact that he had toast and marmelade on that particular date is out of the ordinary. Compare previous discussions about verifiability, expandability, relevance. Whether an NPOV'd diary of Tony Benn with no selective omissions might find its way into Wikipedia is an interesting question of its own.
At the third reiteration, the information ceases to be useful, or interesting. How many times do you wish to cite sources stating that the Missionaries Of Charity took in a lot of money and were pretty shifty about where it went?
Redundancy is obviously unnecessary, however, if separate incidents are described, that is not redundancy but strengthening of the case, as any lawyer knows.
The section "Improper and undisclosed use of funds" could be precis'd into about 6 sentences and no useful information would be lost.
Go ahead and give it a try. I will be happy to correct you if you are wrong.
What rubbish.
...
As a bonus, neither section would then read like it was written by an 3rd grader with attention-deficit disorder.
I note with some interest that you are quickly adopting Jtdirl's style of argument.
Regards,
Erik
erik_moeller@gmx.de (Erik Moeller) writes:
As a bonus, neither section would then read like it was written by an 3rd grader with attention-deficit disorder.
I note with some interest that you are quickly adopting Jtdirl's style of argument.
Badly written is badly written, and I reserve the right to note when an article is badly written. This one is.
[This is being posted to the mailing list only once! Wow!!!]
Erik Moeller wrote:
Gareth Owen wrote:
Really? If I had verifiable facts (from a published Diary, say) that Tony Benn had toast and marmalade for breakfast on the 3rd of March, 1967, and added it to the article, that would be OK and -- how wiki is this -- *irremovable*.
That depends on whether the fact that he had toast and marmelade on that particular date is out of the ordinary. Compare previous discussions about verifiability, expandability, relevance. Whether an NPOV'd diary of Tony Benn with no selective omissions might find its way into Wikipedia is an interesting question of its own.
Actually, if Gareth wants to write [[List of meals eaten by Tony Bennett]], using Bennett's diary as a primary source, then that's just fine with me. I won't waste my time to work on it, but neither would I try to delete it. The datum probably shouldn't be on the main [[Tony Bennett]] page, but if the list were really short, then it might fit in there still.
-- Toby
On 21 Oct 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
At the third reiteration, the information ceases to be useful, or interesting. How many times do you wish to cite sources stating that the Missionaries Of Charity took in a lot of money and were pretty shifty about where it went?
Redundancy is obviously unnecessary, however, if separate incidents are described, that is not redundancy but strengthening of the case, as any lawyer knows.
But we are not trying to _make_ a case. It seems that you want to have a trial on Mother Teresa, where you give the prosecutor's case, and someone else is to do the defense case. We are not. We should say that there are critics, and outline their points of criticism, but then in my opinion we are done. There is no need to specify all kinds of proof for these criticisms. That's not an encyclopedia's job. That's a job for a POV publication.
Andre Engels
--- Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
All I want is for MT to be treated like any other person on Wikipedia. It is not our duty, moral or otherwise, to uphold any kind of fiction to avoid disturbing our readers. We may use some articles from them, but Wikipedia does not use the same editorial policies as the Catholic Encyclopedia. Our policy is NPOV, and that policy is applicable to all people, places and things.
But she's not a "person" --she's ( well on her way to being ) a "saint!"
;-) ~S~
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com
On 21 Oct 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
In spite of repeated charges to this effect, there has never been any substantial NPOV criticism of the Mother Teresa article.
That depends on what you call NPOV. It is well known that the POV of a newspaper is as much clear in _what_ it writes about as in _how_ it writes about those. And to spend more of the article about criticism on Mother Theresa than on the facts of her life and positive statements together is extremely POV.
Instead, some people have argued that 20K of criticism should be split away to a separate page. Fred argues that a splitup needs to be enforced to retain the "aura of holiness" around MT and that not doing so is "mean spirited". It's funny how this kind of pro-Catholic bias is considered acceptable by many.
No, I do not find it acceptable. That's clearly POV. Now satisfied?
All I want is for MT to be treated like any other person on Wikipedia.
The current article is clearly NOT doing that. Wikipedia is now spending more room on the criticism about Mother Theresa than that about Adolf Hitler, in an otherwise much shorter article.
It is not our duty, moral or otherwise, to uphold any kind of fiction to avoid disturbing our readers. We may use some articles from them, but Wikipedia does not use the same editorial policies as the Catholic Encyclopedia. Our policy is NPOV, and that policy is applicable to all people, places and things.
And that is what this is all about. NPOV. Apparently your NPOV is not my NPOV, nor that of several others here. Let's talk about that. Which NPOV are we taking?
Andre Engels
Andre-
On 21 Oct 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
In spite of repeated charges to this effect, there has never been any substantial NPOV criticism of the Mother Teresa article.
That depends on what you call NPOV. It is well known that the POV of a newspaper is as much clear in _what_ it writes about as in _how_ it writes about those. And to spend more of the article about criticism on Mother Theresa than on the facts of her life and positive statements together is extremely POV.
See my earlier explanation regarding balance here: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-October/012681.html
All further discussion should take place in the appropriate forum, namely, [[Talk:Mother Teresa]].
Regards,
Erik
On 21 Oct 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
Fred argues that a splitup needs to be enforced to retain the "aura of holiness" around MT and that not doing so is "mean spirited". It's funny how this kind of pro-Catholic bias is considered acceptable by many.
Where do you conclude that it "is considered acceptable by many". Vicky Rosenzweig and Jake have spoken against it. Noone else has spoken in favor.
Andre Engels
Andre Engels wrote:
Yes, just put it back on the page. What about the basic question of
whether
Wikipedia should be NPOV, and how we do that? Maybe we should finally stop circumventing that question and actually discuss it. Would be useful, I'd say.
... what? NPOV is the one absolute of Wikipedia. Now, we sometimes disagree about what approach is most neutral (there's a tendency these days towards No Point of View, which is quite different), but NPOV is the keystone of everything here.
Fred Bauder wrote:
Interspersed throughout the article it definitely breaks the spell, aura of holiness.
Good.
To expand on that: I'm not a huge fan of Mother Theresa (or Catholicism, or organized religion in general), but neither am I interested in vilifying her; I think there's too much tendency (in both the article and pretty much every other medium I've seen mention) to go to one side or the other. But there should not be an aura of holiness in any article. That's the sort of thing that stifles clear thought. There are positive and negative things to be said about anyone and anything, and very few absolute truths.
-- Jake
On Tue, 21 Oct 2003, Jake Nelson wrote:
Andre Engels wrote:
Yes, just put it back on the page. What about the basic question of
whether
Wikipedia should be NPOV, and how we do that? Maybe we should finally stop circumventing that question and actually discuss it. Would be useful, I'd say.
... what? NPOV is the one absolute of Wikipedia. Now, we sometimes disagree about what approach is most neutral (there's a tendency these days towards No Point of View, which is quite different), but NPOV is the keystone of everything here.
Sorry. I intended to put some irony in my remark, which apparently was not understood completely.
What I meant was that JT and Eloquence both are convinced that they are working for NPOV - and yet do exactly the opposite. To me, the question is not in the first place what to do with the MT article. To me, the question is in the first place is what to do with NPOV. Or rather, how to define NPOV, and which NPOV to use.
It's a difficult subject, but also one that needs to be addressed, in my opinion.
Andre Engels
Andre Engels wrote:
What about the basic question of whether Wikipedia should be NPOV,
Yes, absolutely! This is foundational, non-negotiable, one of my very few stipulations that rises to the level of Policy with a capital 'P'.
and how we do that?
The wiki process! Editing, re-editing, striving to accomodate others, loving care for the facts, respect for others, editing some more, re-editing some more, arguing, talking on the talk page, complaining on the mailing list about article contents, etc.
Maybe we should finally stop circumventing that question and actually discuss it. Would be useful, I'd say.
I would say that's about the only thing that we discuss all the time. :-)
--Jimbo
James-
Not so. NPOV requires balence in content.
Actually, NPOV requires that views are attributed. We have no obligation to "invent" positive views if all we have is negative information. For example, there is no obligation for us to write 10K about how great a painter a dictator was to compensate for the 10K we write about how many people he killed. Certainly we should strive for balance especially in a case like Mother Teresa, and I would have been the first to agree that more should have been written about her life and work. In fact, I have always stated that - all sections should be continually expanded - as soon as a certain length is reached, the article should be split into different sections regardless of their content.
It does not matter who or when people protested against the controversies being listed on the Mother Teresa page, what matters is whether the course of action to split away *only the controversial* parts of the article is proper and in line with our established policy or not. I think it is quite clear that it is not. The simple reality is that most people do not know much about the criticisms concerning Mother Teresa, and there is a large gulf between the reality of her work and the media portrayal thereof. It is therefore to be expected that people will assume that an article is biased when it presents more critical information than they would expect. However, there is clear precedent on what to do in cases like this, for example, the [[Scientology]] article, where individual sections were split away as the article became too long. It is not NPOV to split away only the controversy section.
You repeatedly insist that your only commitment is to neutrality and academic standards. Why, then, do you not mention with a single word the objections that have been raised by other contributors to your actions? Both Bryan Derksen and Jiang, long-term Wikipedia contributors with a positive track record, have objected to your splitting away. Clearly there was no consensus for your actions, yet you persisted in reverting to your preferred version. Are you seriously trying to tell me that this was in the spirit of cooperation and Wikiquette? I think even you know that it was not, since you seem to imply that it was OK because I would do the same (use consensus only when it suits me).
I did not edit the page for the next few hours and nor did you,
You know I am not on during the daytime.
I don't watch your edits. My unprotection of the page had a single purpose, to allow other contributors to continue working on the article because of the beatification on Sunday in spite of our silly edit war. The protection did not stop me or you from editing the page, but it stopped others, so it seemed very unfair to uphold it. You will have to admit that this is not even close to being abusive behavior.
In addition to that, you continue to play your usual games, which consist of
- personal attacks (always singling out one contributor, even though
several users have expressed disagreement with your actions)
I have to say at this point that a ban of Jtdirl is no longer out of the question for me.?Eloquence 22:07, Oct 20, 2003 (UTC)
At the point where your behavior became so crass and clearly in violation of what this community stands for, it was only logical for me to bring up the question of whether you should be allowed to persist in this kind of behavior, as we have clear rules on these matters.
To compare a tongue-in-cheek remark like "valiant defender of truth" to the kind of personal attacks you have made against me -- that I don't know what I'm talking about, that my prose is poorly written, convoluted etc., that I tried to rewrite the article based on the claims of a single person, that I wanted to turn all of Wikipedia into some kind of anti- Catholic bashfest -- is quite obviously inaccurate. You have a long history of rudeness and it would be helpful if you would begin to acknowledge at least that, for this would be the first step towards better cooperation.
So why then accuse me of a 'pro-catholic bias' and censoring criticism of MT, when I was doing nothing of the sort, merely trying to NPOV an article and give stuff not about MT its own article?
Because moving away everything that is critical while then providing a one-paragraph-summary thereof is not even close to neutral.
Which is why, I suppose, every edit I made for ages tonight was screwed around when you went in and began changing past tense to present tense
Oh please. I don't give a hoot about past or present tense. I have told you a zillion times before that you should not complain about lost changes if you don't try to resolve one matter before making the next change.
That cannot always be done, of course, but there are reasonable courses of actions in the cases where it can't (act based on established precedent, hold a vote, ask Jimbo etc.). Just trying to get "your way or the highway" will not lead to any kind of solution.
More threats from 'The User Who Does Not Make Threats', eh?
Huh? Where exactly is the threat in the above paragraph?
I have co-operated with many people on wikipedia. The only fights I have had here in ages have been with you
That's funny. My mailbox is full of long flames written by you which have not been directed at me. Look, James, everyone who knows even a little bit about you knows that you frequently resort to attacking people personally. You often apologize later when these attacks are directed at regulars, and that is good. But why do you attack people in the first place? Isn't it obvious that this whole conflict would never have arisen if you had just made your suggestion for changes on the talk pages and tried to find a solution together with me? Do you think that I am so incredibly biased that it is not possible to work with me?
Regards,
Erik
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org