→[[John Stuart Mill]] vs. Jossi: where to criticize |
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Moving criticism of a person away from their biographical article amounts to burying it in a POV fork. I'm fine with criticism of Hitchens (and there sure is a lot of it) residing in Hitchens' article, but his criticism of MT belongs here in MT's article. In short, I agree with Cesar Tort on this matter. [[User:Alienus|Alienus]] 17:31, 15 April 2006 (UTC) |
Moving criticism of a person away from their biographical article amounts to burying it in a POV fork. I'm fine with criticism of Hitchens (and there sure is a lot of it) residing in Hitchens' article, but his criticism of MT belongs here in MT's article. In short, I agree with Cesar Tort on this matter. [[User:Alienus|Alienus]] 17:31, 15 April 2006 (UTC) |
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:: Thanks Ethan. Your explanation of Wikipedia’s disputed policies #1, #2 and #3 are most pertinent now that I’m having big trouble with some POV editors of the [[Biological psychiatry]] article. Thanks for explaining them! |
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:: I haven’t read Hitchens’ book so I cannot ascertain whether or not he is a “cranky pundit” (though I have read some of his articles, including a MT article in ''Free Inquiry'' magazine). However, if MT diverted the funds to the Vatican that donors believed would be used for the poor, Hitchens’ accusation doesn’t sound crank to me. |
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:: And yes: it would be great if some people from the 16th-18th centuries spoke out against the Inquisition here in Mexico! Hitchens aside, let’s think a little about Arthur Koestler or Orwell. In their times most of the intellectuals were wrong about communist Russia and these two individual critics were right. This example helps me to illustrate why I still believe that [[On Liberty]] is a milestone in our understanding of something that people has not grasped yet, not even wikipedians. As I stated in my April 2 post, ''there are the same probabilities that a single individual may be right or wrong on a controversial issue than the rest of humanity''. If we don’t listen to them... just look what happened to the world under communist rule. —[[User:Cesar Tort|Cesar Tort]] 17:47, 15 April 2006 (UTC) |
Revision as of 17:47, 15 April 2006
For previous discussion, see:
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You may want to read the Talk:Mother Teresa/FAQ and related discussion before commenting. Also see Talk:Mother Teresa/Groundrules.
John Stuart Mill vs. Jossi
I have read the flaming controversy of the previous MT talk pages. I cannot discuss everything I have read but will offer my comments on the recent issues.
A point that Jossi has repeated over and over again, with some backup from Ethan Mitchell, is that a quarter of the article ought not present the POV of just four individuals.
I wonder if Jossi knows one of the pillars of free societies: John Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty. Mill tried very hard to show there that the claim that “we should not represent the views of a small minority” is something extremely wrong. I would like to illustrate Mill’s point with the city in which I was born.
Five hundred years ago the Aztecs ruled the place known now as Mexico City. They were sanguinary theocrats that sacrificed little children to their gods. The Aztecs were just the last people in a sanguinary culture that developed in almost three thousand years. Though codices survived the Spanish conquest, no Indian, at least in writing, seems to have spoken out against child sacrifice. Why? Because they were a tiny minority; and tiny minorities are rarely heard in a totalitarian culture.
One of the phrases that struck me the most in On Liberty was Mill’s statement that there are exactly the same probabilities that a single individual may be right or wrong on a controversial issue than the rest of humanity. That’s why Mill fought for the outsider to be listened with due attention even if the society overwhelmingly outnumbers the lone outsider.
I don’t want to compare MT with the Aztecs. But like Mill I believe, above all, in the genius of certain individuals, and value the society that —unlike the Aztecs— makes their existence possible.
This is a plea for people like Hitchens to be heard in at least a quarter of the article. The tragedy with the Aztecs and the next totalitarian society that took over the city in which I live, the Spanish with their Inquisition, is that both of them wiped out, vanished and reduced to nothing all dissenting opinion.
This simply cannot happen today, much less in Wikipedia. Cesar Tort 05:48, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
- Just one observation - you say, "This is a plea for people like Hitchens to be heard in at least a quarter of the article" - no probs. on that count, I'd support evan a full article on Hitchens, but definitely not MT's article. If I give one quarter to Hitchens and another to other critics, what is left to talk of facts of MT per se? Also, jossi was quoting from the NPOV policy - if you have a problem with that, pls. try to get the policy changed rather than cast aspersions such as "This simply cannot happen today, much less in Wikipedia" as it would be unproductive. --Gurubrahma 12:22, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
- OK with not giving a quarter to every critic. But why not just leave the 25% to all critics, as the article stands now, and just improve the Controversy section by sourcing the “citation needed”? Cesar Tort 19:18, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
- Diseenting opinions need to be present in an article as diseenting opinions. Passing value judgements about this and that are not the domain of Wikipedia editors. Cesar, I would suggest you need read WP:NPOV to understand Wikipedia content policies work. You may also want to read WP:NOT to understand what this encyclopedia is not. And by the way, Christopher Hitchens, has his own article in which you can expand on his criticism on this and other individuals. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 14:42, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
- I have already read those tutorials.
- “Dissenting opinions need to be present in an article as dissenting opinions”. This reminds me very strongly Alexis de Tocqueville’s fears of the tyranny of democracy (i.e., the dictatorship of the masses). The 25% space for critics precisely represents the balancing NPOV for this article. Cesar Tort 19:39, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
- WP:LIVING refers to living personalities. MT is dead. Cesar Tort 19:53, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
- What does WP:LIVING have to do with this? Moreover, why don't we put what the Pope said on the Pope's page? Why must only the comments of critics go on their pages?--Prosfilaes 19:59, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
- This is a quotation from Wikipedia’s On Liberty:
- “In Mill's view, tyranny of the majority is worse than tyranny of government because it is not limited to a political function. Where one can be protected from a tyrant, it is much harder to be protected 'against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling'. As such, people will be subject to what society thinks is suitable — and people will be fashioned as such. The prevailing opinions within society will be the basis of all rules of conduct within society. As such there can be no safeguard in law against the tyranny of the majority.”
- This makes me think about all those Gallup polls on MT and this very article. —Cesar Tort 02:37, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
- My point with all that Mill stuff and quotations was precisely to discuss your planned edits to this article: moving everything you dislike to the critics’ page. —Cesar Tort 03:19, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
- Didn’t you write: “After summarizing, we could move most of the content to these author’s respective articles” (on 9 March 2006, 18:40 UTC)? —Cesar Tort 05:09, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
- So we agree to disagree —Cesar Tort 15:40, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
- You may want to take a look at Talk:Mother Teresa/Archive1. Since 2003 overzealous editors wanted to move all criticism to another articles. But always failed to do so... —Cesar Tort 16:22, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Cesar- I'm a great fan of Mill. On LIberty is one of my favorite essays. I'm not a fricking Catholic apologist. I agree with Hitchens to a great degree. And no one is trying to remove all the criticism of Mother Teresa from this page.
A number of people, myself included, feel that the (currently) minority status of the criticism, coupled with its generally presumptive nature, coupled with the scarcity of prominent adherents, suggests that it violates Wikipedia's NPOV policy to elaborate the criticisms here on this page, since they are currently more associated with their authors than with their subject. That is what we are talking about. Ethan Mitchell 19:47, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
- Thanks for your comments, Ethan, I appreciate them.
- I have not only read the MT Archive Talks, but printed them and presently I am re-reading them in a special ring binder I bought for the occasion.
- I am surprised to see that, from day one in 2003, MT’s fans have tried so hard to move criticism to other pages. It’s remarkable the flaming level around this issue in those Archives! The last thing I want is to engage in that sort of uncivil discussions with other editors.
- However, though I understand your opinion, I respectfully disagree. For instance, you like Mill’s On Liberty. Great! What can you tell me then about what I wrote in this talk page on 02:37, 3 April 2006 (UTC)? —Cesar Tort 22:37, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
- All right. As I understand it, you are saying that if we reduce the proportion of an article devoted to criticism to below X percent, then we are marginalizing and silencing the critics. In my experience, though, this is not how people absorb information. If I don't know anything about Abagail Frunk, and I'm reading along about what a great person she was, and then I run across a line that says "Several witnesses saw her kill and eat her neighbors and their lapdogs," then I am going to sit up and pay attention, even though it is only twelve words in a sea of words.
- However, if I'm trying to learn how my refrigerator works, and a large portion of the text is devoted to Dr. Wonkum's theory that electrons have feelings, too, you know, I am apt to be irritated. Clearly, clearly, I can screen out the information I don't want. But not if it begins to dwarf the information I'm looking for. And if we establish as a precedent that any critique deserves to be discussed in great detail on the page corresponding to the object of criticism, we are moving in that direction.
- Cesar, you have said you are happy to spend 25% of an article on X discussing four people's criticisms of X. I imagine that if eight authors were criticizing MT, you would not concede that 50% of the article should be criticism? So the principle you seem to be suggesting is that if ANY prominent criticisms of X exist, we should spend 25% of the article discussing them. This seems to me an impossible burden on wikipedia.
- Consider a paragraph like this: "Several prominent critics of Mother Teresa, including health experts and some of her former volunteers, have argued that the widespread admiration for her is misplaced. They argue that Mother Teresa's ministries are focused primarily on converting people to Catholicism, and that such medical treatment as is provided is meager and incompetent, even by the low standards of Calcutta. Further, these critics argue that Mother Teresa and the Catholic Church have misused funds donated for medical purposes, and callously pursued a campaign of deathbed conversion rather than providing competent medical and hospice care."
- Three sentences. But what reader can get through it with all their innocent hagiolatry intact? Those who want to learn more about Hitchens' criticisms can click on the link to his page, and those who don't, or are already aware of Hitchens' critiques but are trying to read a page about Mother Teresa, won't. Ethan Mitchell 00:14, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
- Of course, Ethan: claims that witnesses saw Frunk kill and eat her neighbors, or Wonkum’s theory that electrons have feelings, shouldn’t be mentioned in serious articles. But I trust you agree with me that these sort of lunatic claims are not in the same category of Hitchens’ accusations?
- I wouldn’t concede 50% to eight MT critics. I am only asking 25% for all critics, whether they have published books or were just acquaintances of MT.
- I do believe however (and that was my point above) that neither Aztecs nor New Spain scholars in Mexico spoke out respectively against Aztec child sacrifice or the New Spain Inquisition because in totalitarian, theocratic societies, dissidents are never heard: they are invisible. That’s why Mill is so important. Even a minority of one —whether an Indian critic of child sacrifice or a New Spaniard critic of the Inquisition— would have been heard in an open society. But there are no existing pre-Hispanic or novo-Hispanic pamphlets exposing any of those atrocious events...
- I believe many of the problems in Mexico today, an underdeveloped country with atrocious levels of poverty, have to do with its totalitarian past. A single individual may be right and the rest of the society wrong. That’s what I learnt in Mill’s On Liberty and Orwell’s 1984. Hitchens is no Wonkum. All I am asking is some space for people like him in the MT article. —Cesar Tort 01:51, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
- Well, more specifically, you are asking for up to 25% of each article to be devoted to a criticism of the article's subject. Yes? This isn't about "some space;" everyone involved in this discussion for quite some time has agreed that Hitchens et al. should get "some space." This is about the NPOV:UW policy.
- I agree with you that Hitchens is not making "lunatic claims," but I think I would also agree with JSM that we are incomptent to decide who is and who is not a lunatic. So, as I see it, wikipedia only has three options on the table:
- (#1)Every critic, including Wonkum, gets individually mentioned. The criticism section can take up a certain ammount (25%?) of the article, irrespective of how few critics are cited.
- (#2)Criticisms are given an ammount of room on the subject's page proportional to how widely they are accepted; important but minority critiques are explicated further on their own pages.
- (#3)Criticisms are given room on the subject's page proportional to how much wikipedians agree with them.
- Now, the NPOV:UW policy is #2. Cesar and others are suggesting #1, but to do this consistently would entail a massive re-styling of wikipedia, and it seems unlikely to me that any of us are really looking for that. So I cannot help but feel that what people are really pushing for is #3, and that is quite obviously an NPOV violation.
- I would be game, incidentally, to apply a policy like #1 in some consistent fashion. But I don't hear any enthusiasm for doing so, and I doubt MT is the issue that will change people's minds. We are, after all, talking mostly about a fairly cranky pundit arguing about the reputation of a dead woman, with few facts in dispute. It isn't like anyone says MT was a brain surgeon. Here on this talk page, we are all hopped up about her, but I don't see this as an issue that will compell people to rewrite an entire encyclopedia.
- And, Cesar, as a total non-sequiter, I think there are some surviving novo-Hispanic sources critical of the Inquisition in Mexico. Let me get back to you on that. Cheers, Ethan. Ethan Mitchell 12:50, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
Moving criticism of a person away from their biographical article amounts to burying it in a POV fork. I'm fine with criticism of Hitchens (and there sure is a lot of it) residing in Hitchens' article, but his criticism of MT belongs here in MT's article. In short, I agree with Cesar Tort on this matter. Alienus 17:31, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
- Thanks Ethan. Your explanation of Wikipedia’s disputed policies #1, #2 and #3 are most pertinent now that I’m having big trouble with some POV editors of the Biological psychiatry article. Thanks for explaining them!
- I haven’t read Hitchens’ book so I cannot ascertain whether or not he is a “cranky pundit” (though I have read some of his articles, including a MT article in Free Inquiry magazine). However, if MT diverted the funds to the Vatican that donors believed would be used for the poor, Hitchens’ accusation doesn’t sound crank to me.
- And yes: it would be great if some people from the 16th-18th centuries spoke out against the Inquisition here in Mexico! Hitchens aside, let’s think a little about Arthur Koestler or Orwell. In their times most of the intellectuals were wrong about communist Russia and these two individual critics were right. This example helps me to illustrate why I still believe that On Liberty is a milestone in our understanding of something that people has not grasped yet, not even wikipedians. As I stated in my April 2 post, there are the same probabilities that a single individual may be right or wrong on a controversial issue than the rest of humanity. If we don’t listen to them... just look what happened to the world under communist rule. —Cesar Tort 17:47, 15 April 2006 (UTC)