On Monday 11 November 2002 03:48 pm, wikipedia-l-request@wikipedia.org wrote:
While the rest of the world came to to the conclusion that America is = just a jumped up banana-republic junta run by a bunch of crypto-fascists = with a finger glued permanently to the self-destruct button a long time = ago, you're not allowed to point it out in Wikipedia. How thoroughly = refreshing to be working on such an enlightened project. Dickens' = Ministry of Circumlocution would have been proud of the people who = deleted that page.
rgds
Steve Callaway
Then state your POV on your user page or write an essay and post it at Meta. But leave the wikipedia:namespace free from POV divisiveness.
We have open POV forums. Please use the correct channels.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
The problem is that most content is actually highly POV masquerading under the flag of POV. And often it tends towards a certain perspective i.e. one which is both supportive of the hegemonistic status quo and suppressive of alternative viewpoints. This debate is just the visible tip of an iceberg, and you know it so do me and a few other people who don't subscribe to your cosy little view of things a little respect and CUT THE BULLSHIT. The Anti-America deletion and the yattering of the mental sheep that supported it is highly indicative of how desparate some people are to pretend to follow some sort of highly vacillatory NPOV party line.
Wikipedia has an important policy: roughly stated, you should write
articles without bias, representing all views fairly. This is easily misunderstood. The policy doesn't assume that it's possible to write an article from just one point of view, which would be the one unbiased, "objective" point of view. The Wikipedia neutrality policy says that we should fairly represent all sides of a dispute, and not make an article state, imply, or insinuate that any one side is correct. <<
Anti-American views are not represented. Fact. Moreover, not only are they not represented, they are frequently systematically excised. This is not the first time that I have been disgruntled to see a comment which drew conclusions about Amerika being ruthlessly and swiftly excised. It is beginning to seem that America and its proponents have taken to book burning.
If you think that there aren't ideological processes in play in this respect then I suggest your rub the sleep from your eyes. A systematic and rigourous NPOV review of the body of work to rmove some of the more overt pro-US propaganda so far is long overdue.
Slightly fewer rgds
Steve Callaway
Then state your POV on your user page or write an essay and post it at
Meta.
But leave the wikipedia:namespace free from POV divisiveness.
We have open POV forums. Please use the correct channels.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
----- Original Message ----- From: "Daniel Mayer" maveric149@yahoo.com To: wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2002 12:29 AM Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: voting
On Monday 11 November 2002 03:48 pm, wikipedia-l-request@wikipedia.org
wrote:
While the rest of the world came to to the conclusion that America is = just a jumped up banana-republic junta run by a bunch of crypto-fascists
=
with a finger glued permanently to the self-destruct button a long time
=
ago, you're not allowed to point it out in Wikipedia. How thoroughly = refreshing to be working on such an enlightened project. Dickens' = Ministry of Circumlocution would have been proud of the people who = deleted that page.
rgds
Steve Callaway
Then state your POV on your user page or write an essay and post it at
Meta.
But leave the wikipedia:namespace free from POV divisiveness.
We have open POV forums. Please use the correct channels.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On 11/12/02 2:40 AM, "Steve Callaway" sjc@easynet.co.uk wrote:
The problem is that most content is actually highly POV masquerading under the flag of POV. And often it tends towards a certain perspective i.e. one which is both supportive of the hegemonistic status quo and suppressive of alternative viewpoints. This debate is just the visible tip of an iceberg, and you know it so do me and a few other people who don't subscribe to your cosy little view of things a little respect and CUT THE BULLSHIT. The Anti-America deletion and the yattering of the mental sheep that supported it is highly indicative of how desparate some people are to pretend to follow some sort of highly vacillatory NPOV party line.
This is why we'd be much better off admitting that NPOV is an ideal, not something that anything or anyone on Wikipedia actually achieves.
Steve Callaway wrote:
Anti-American views are not represented. Fact.
The purpose of wikipedia is not to *represent* anti-American views. Neither pro-American views, BTW. They can be *mentioned*, *described*, *analyzed* in encyclopedia articles. Maybe we *should* have an article about anti-American views, if we don't already have one. If you feel that some (or all) articles are biased towards american views, point it out in these articles, and weight such statements accordingly. No one, including me (who originally deleted that anti-American users page), will stop you from doing that, if your intention is clearly to present facts, and mark all viewpoints as such, If you feel like smearing "I hate America" all over some place, wikipedia is not it. Get yourself a home page somewhere else and stop wasting my time.
Magnus CEO, Ministry of Circumlocution ;-)
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