Djcastel

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Hello, Djcastel, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  --Bhadani 17:39, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Censorship vote

I just wanted to reply to the concern you raised in your vote. Rest assured that resizing, removal, placement, etc of images or other media will remain completely OK- it's just that the reasoning for it must be something other than "offensiveness," since it may be (and this is your call to make) too arbitrary of a boundary (as it's based on culture, time period, social norms, etc). Feel free to vote whichever way you like; but your vote should really be based on whether you think possible offensiveness is criteria enough, on it's own, for removal/resizing/movement of images. "Regular" editing- for aesthetic reasons or readability- aren't banned, or even addressed, under this policy. Thanks.--AK7 01:10, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Atheism

Thanks for your excellent updates to the article! If you get some free time, can you take a look at Atheism#Classical_antiquity. I think some of the paragraphs need expanding, especially with respect to persecution of those labeled atheists. It's not often that an article gets the attention of someone well-versed in the subject of the article... so... Thanks! — BRIAN0918 • 2007-04-28 03:14Z

Criticism sections

Religion, philosophy, and politics articles have the worst abuses of "Criticism" sections, and any policy/guideline/essay on this issue would accomplish very little if we excluded these subjects.

What do you think of this template? — Omegatron 23:17, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I've already seen this template used in articles, and I like it a lot. Thanks for alerting me to the deletion discussion. The tag itself is perfect, though in the description, I would go further and discourage even "Criticism" subheadings under each section. If an article is well-written, balanced, and neutral, there is no need to create "Criticism" sections or subsections in the first place. Djcastel 13:41, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree, but apparently a lot of people think they're necessary. I can't fathom why. I guess when you see something everywhere you get to thinking it's supposed to be there. — Omegatron 18:53, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I see what you mean. Those aren't supposed to be subheadings. — Omegatron 18:53, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

The wording of the template is under discussion on the talk page. — Omegatron 17:18, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

NPOV and POV (Hesychasm)

I have come back from the dead to ask you a question.

Background:

On the Hesychasm article (q.v.), on 2007 July 19 16:48 you removed my remark on the Link to the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia article on Hesychasm, on the grounds that it was POV.

As the Hesychasm article now stands, there is a neutral sounding link to the 1917 CE article. The link now also contains a secondary link to a bio, on Wikipedia, of Adrian Fortescue, the author of the 1917 CE article. If you go to that link, he sounds like a wonderful guy. It's a puff. Back to the original link: Let us suppose that we should have a NPOV on Wikipedia. What does that mean? When I originally edited the Hesychasm article--the substance of the article in its present form is largely due to me--I found the link as a bald link. I went to the article and found a very biased article. I don't think it is earth-shaking news that the 1917 CE had a systemic bias in favour of a triumphalist Roman Catholicism, which was replaced in Vatican II by a different POV. Could you be so kind as to read the 1917 CE article on Hesychasm? You are a historian. Is it a balanced appraisal? When I was editing the Hesychasm article, out of courtesy I put the note on the link that the article was biased rather than delete the link. Now you have come along and removed the flag that the article linked to is POV. On the surface, the Wikipedia article now has a NPOV: it links to a variety of articles without making any POV remarks. But in essence, by whatever cachet Wikipedia has, it is fostering the 1917 CE article as an unbiased appraisal of Hesychasm. This might come into clearer focus if I remark that in the 14th Century there was a very big theological controversy over Hesychasm, with the Catholic view essentially being that summarized by Fortescue in the 1917 CE article. The Orthodox Church officially accepted a different view, validating the teachings of St Gregory Palamas, who to my knowledge has never been accepted by Rome as a saint (see the Angelus link for a modern pope's brief reflections). In other words, the Fortescue article is an extreme statement of a pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic negative assessment of an Orthodox Spirituality. Since you are a historian, you should be able to figure out whether linking to such an article without notification is in substance NPOV, or whether it is the form of NPOV promoting (probably unintentionally) a very negative POV. I might also remark that among the other links that have been added is one to Quietism, which was a 17th Century Roman Catholic heresy. Often there is an attempt to tar Hesychasm, which dates to the 5th Century and which has no connection with the Roman Catholic heresy, with the same brush.

The problem here, Mr Castel is systemic bias introduced into Wikipedia by the use of public domain secondary sources. In the particular case of the Catholic Encyclopdia the systemic bias is quite evident. A subtle person would also detect systemic bias in the 1911 Britannica.

So the grand question: How do we preserve the substance of NPOV?

Please note that I can only be contacted by email, as is suitable for a dead Wikipedian.

With best wishes--Garlic and Sapphires 18:07, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Since you have not left an e-mail address, I will respond to you here. Wikipedia is NPOV, which is non-negotiable, so I correctly removed your highly opinionated POV description of the link. You raise a valuable point as to whether linking to POV-sources is an implicit violation of NPOV policy. Whatever the merits of that argument, current widespread practice allows links to external sites with a POV. Since most academic and journalistic sources have a POV, forbidding such links would eliminate many useful external links on Wikipedia. It is best to simply state what the source is, in this case the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1917, and it should be obvious what the basic POV is, in this case that of Catholics circa 1917. Djcastel 15:58, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

As concerns the email address, I re-activated my Garlic and Sapphires user account to enable any editor of Wikipedia to email me using the standard Wikipedia toolbox > E-mail this user facilities. However, I am now going to deactivate my user-page if I can. As for the content of your reply--it is a full reply. I wish you all the best. May God be with you.Garlic and Sapphires 18:26, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Merge discussion in Međugorje

I have updated the merge discussion in Međugorje patsw 17:59, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
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