1) Yes, Erik is Eloquence, and has been involved in many edit wars on subjects which he has little expertise.
2) More importantly, what IS the problem? Clutch, we don't know each other, but you cannot NOT mention Wagner's anti-Semitism. It may have had little to do with his music, but Wagner very influential in the rise of German nationalist thought (of the more conservative to extreme type). Whether or not Wagner himself had anything to do with it, one cannot discuss him without at least mentioning the affinity Hitler had for his music -- the Ring cycle especially, as an ur-German saga...
3 )An historian might deal with this by saying something like, "Wagner is seen by many to have been anti-Semitic, or at least to have supported the idea of anti-Semitism This belief is generally based on one of Wagner's own works [insert name here], in which he describes the Jews as..." In this was, no one is labeling or falsely accusing anybody of anything -- just offering a generally held conclusion and the basis therefore. Speaking of which, I hope there is something similar in the article about that nice Mr. Luther...
Jules
On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 12:37:49PM -0800, Julie Hofmann Kemp wrote:
- Yes, Erik is Eloquence, and has been involved in many edit wars on
subjects which he has little expertise.
- More importantly, what IS the problem? Clutch, we don't know each
other, but you cannot NOT mention Wagner's anti-Semitism. It may have
Let's be clear. I wasn't eliminating mention of Wagners anti-Semitism. But I was attempting to restore balance to the article by giving it appropriate importance. Devoting half the article to discussing the man's anti-Semitism was clearly way out of line.
therefore. Speaking of which, I hope there is something similar in the article about that nice Mr. Luther...
The brief discussion of anti-Semitism in Luther's article is closer to what I had in mind for the Wagner article.
Jonathan
On Tue, 2002-12-10 at 15:37, Julie Hofmann Kemp wrote
3 )An historian might deal with this by saying something like, "Wagner is seen by many to have been anti-Semitic, or at least to have supported the idea of anti-Semitism This belief is generally based on one of Wagner's own works [insert name here], in which he describes the Jews as..." In this was, no one is labeling or falsely accusing anybody of anything -- just offering a generally held conclusion and the basis therefore. Speaking of which, I hope there is something similar in the article about that nice Mr. Luther...
That said, unnecessary qualifications and hedging don't help the picture either.
The world is thought by many to exist, even though we could all be brains in a jar.
But we don't need to include that hedge except for a discussion of "existence" or observables.
Similarly, when we make claims about the past, such as "There were ice ages" or "Wagner was anti-Semitic", we mean "There is evidence of ice ages in the past, where 'ice age' has a specific meaning" and "There is evidence that Wagner was anti-Semitic, or at least supported the idea of anti-Semitism".
It's inappropriate to claim "There were ice ages" without providing the supporting evidence, but the claim itself is fine.
On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 04:29:55PM -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
It's inappropriate to claim "There were ice ages" without providing the supporting evidence, but the claim itself is fine.
Actually, there is a lot of evidence from scientists, atheist and otherwise, that earths cool periods never were ice ages, in the sense of huge ice sheets covering more than a quarter of the earths surface area.
Jonathan
On Tue, 2002-12-10 at 16:26, Jonathan Walther wrote:
On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 04:29:55PM -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
It's inappropriate to claim "There were ice ages" without providing the supporting evidence, but the claim itself is fine.
Actually, there is a lot of evidence from scientists, atheist and otherwise, that earths cool periods never were ice ages, in the sense of huge ice sheets covering more than a quarter of the earths surface area.
Not credibly. Glaciations leave wonderfully clear geologic records. But let's not get into this here.
Thank you for serving my point that there are people who will argue against just about any claim; that is why it's better to err on the side of not adding qualifiers to every statement.
Julie wrote:
- Yes, Erik is Eloquence, and has been involved in many edit wars on
subjects which he has little expertise.
Care to back this up with facts? Or should I counter this claim by pointing out that you have written a significant number of articles that are not NPOV, but written from a relativist (some would say apologist) perspective? That you wanted to delete facts from the Galileo article because you didn't like the source, as you regarded it as biased, without being able to prove it wrong? You and Michael Tinkler have done a lot of work on Wikipedia, and I respect that, but both of you have written articles on subjects of Christian history which I consider far from NPOV, often entirely ignoring church-critical positions (likely because you are not even aware of them, although Tinkler tends towards sincere apologism, he's a devout Catholic after all).
I still find your following statements from the Inquisition talk page quite remarkable: "What happened to NPOV? Yes, the Inquistions[sic] to us are pretty scary, but could we please try to remember that, to the vast majority of people living at the time of the first two Inquisitions discussed in this article, heresy was a BAD thing. Heresy existed, and not because of some conspiracy by Authority[sic]. Heretics not only went to hell, but their very presence in society put others at risk. At least, that's how your average medieval Christian would see it. CONTEXT IS IMPORTANT." That's cultural relativism at its best -- let's turn cause and effect around until they no longer are recognizable. I can live with this view being *represented*, but I can not accept it being *presented* as if it was NPOV. If this is still your understanding of NPOV, it is deeply flawed.
Because of this relativism from interested parties, it will be a lot of work to add, for example, accurate information about the books of the Bible and their individual history, the historical person of Jesus, persecution of pagans and destruction of temples and libraries, Christian book burnings and censorship, medieval fakery, Christian anti-Semitism, Christian anti-scientism, church attempts to destroy knowledge about contraception, modern church support for dictatorships and mass murder etc. etc. The long historical tradition that correctly views the Dark Ages as dark is not accurately represented on Wikipedia. Your alleged expertise is not an argument. It may be an argument in Larry's world, but it is not here. Modern medievalism in particular is often an attempt to "invent the Middle Ages", as Norman Cantor, a medievalist himself, called it. I am happy that the NPOV policy will make this impossible in the long term.
Furthermore, the claim that I have participated in "many" edit wars is simply wrong. Often, however, editing back and forth, changing words here and there, is the only way to reach an acceptable compromise. This happened with you on the Galileo article, and with Clutch during his vandalism of Lir's page (where several people, including myself, reverted his changes) and now during his trolling of the Wagner article. If you read the list archive, you will notice that I have argued for a better and more reliable decision making process based on democratic voting by interested participants. Until we have that, our process remains flawed. It is true that I like to work on articles about controversial subjects, so I'm more likely to run into these process problems than someone who, say, is only interested in getting the entire Tolkien mythology online [note: not referring to Julie here].
If you want to take personal attacks to the list, I can do that, too -- it's called "tit for tat". That being said, I still think it is possible to work with you on writing NPOV articles. I consider your intentions to be good and much of your information to be reasonably accurate. I also noticed your statement on one Talk page that you "like your Middle Ages, warts and all" (paraphrased) -- it's good to know that you are interested in reporting the truth. It's much harder to work with someone like Clutch.
Regards,
Erik (Eloquence)
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