[WikiEN-l] A call for moderation

[Wily D]

On Feb 19, 2008 7:50 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/19/08, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 19/02/2008, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I think you miss Jimbos point by a country mile. The status quo on
> > > wikipedia is to "continue to dialog about possibilities which would
> > > be satisfactory to all sides."
> >
> > There is absolutely no way that is a legit description of what is
> > going on and any attempt to hold such a conversation would need to
> > rewrite some fairly core wikipedia policies such as NPOV.
> >
> > --
> > geni
>
> The Core of NPOV is that there is something that is satisfactory
> to all sides, or at least equally unpalatable to all.
>
> A further problem with an attempt to invoke NPOV here (which
> I think is really not well advised) is that the precise problem is that
> to this date, there really are no useful editorial guidelines to apply to
> images that are all that fundamental. And I specifically count
> NPOV as one guideline that images have by and large quite
> openly flauted in most articles without any comment whatsoever.
>
> Many of the questions about what images to use when it is
> not a question of a documentary type of an image (a photograph
> or at the very least a portrait that was done at a sitting, or from
> a sketch or the like), is that we are doing the text equivalent of
> using a quotation from a historical fiction novel in the encyclopedia
> article. That is, using the imagination of an artist to make our
> article a more entertaining read.
>
> In the case of Muhammed, we don't even appear to have the
> fig leaf of claiming to display one example of an artistic
> convention about what Muhammed looked like, like arguably
> in the case of Jesus might obtain (nevermind that that convention
> doesn't look remotely like a jew).
>
> The most informative of the images about mohammed that we
> have in the article is in my humble opinion the one with the
> veil, if this was indeed a customary style of depicting him.
> There is at least a smidgen of information imparted there, in
> that veiled was a common way of depicting him in some
> traditions...
>
>
> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
>
Both veiled and unveiled depictions have substantial historic
traditions - so far in our discussions at Talk:Muhammad, I haven't
seen any studies on the relative prominance of the two traditions.

Is anyone familiar with such a study?
WilyD