Skovoroda

Welcome!

Hello, Skovoroda, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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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! Captainj 20:42, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Proposed Article Deletions

Sorry to have to do this... Your article on Block democracy may not be appropriate for Wikipedia (please see the article itself and the above guidelines). I have proposed it for deletion, if no-one objects, it will be deleted in 5 days. You (or anyone else) can object by removing the notice from the page(you simply edit the page and delete it). If you do so the article will not be deleted (please read all the guidelines first). Please be aware if you do remove , unless the article is substantially changed, it will be nominated for deletion and voted on by the community.

I am also considering proposing the articles Bottom-up democracy and Top-down democracy for the deletion for the same reason, I will look at them more closely when I get a chance. If you object now on their talk page or here, I won't propose them, but will nominate them instead (and they will be voted on).

Sorry about all that, but if you are interested in democracy you could make some very useful contributions to Wikipedia:WikiProject Politics, in particular you might want to look at the stub articles which are very short articles that need expanding.

Good luck,

Captainj 22:04, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Revisions

1. I have added citations that the phrase "bottom-up democracy" is indeed used -- doing a Google search on the phrase will reveal this even more.

2. Since the phrase is indeed used, it is appropriate for an encyclopedia to explain how it is used. This I have tried to do.

3. I have provided some evidence that at least for Chomsky anarchism is a type of bottom-up democracy. If this is satisfactory, please remove your notice.

4. As to Soviet democracy, I am not clear what you are objecting to -- so please be more specific.

5. In view of these explanations and support, are you still of the mind that the article should be deleted?

Skovoroda 13:32, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

1 & 2. The citations are more than enough to demonstrate the need for the article. I never proposed it for deletion, I just said I would look at it because I wasn't sure. It is indeed an appropriate article and I am glad you added it to Wikipedia. I think it is a very valuable contribution.

3&4. This has nothing to do with me. User:Oberst added these notices, and he explained why on the article talk page. You can leave a message for hime on his talk page, or you can simply remove the notices yourself, if you believe they are no longer applicable. If you wish, I will review the sections when I get a chance and remove the notices if I believe them not to apply.

5.The only article that I proposed for deletion was Block democracy, and I still believe that it should be deleted, however if you can find citations and evidence for it I may change my mind. If you don't believe it should be deleted you are free to object (removing the notice will suffice). If I still believe it is innapropriate I will nominate it and it will go to a vote (if that happens I will post a link to the vote so you can have a say).

Captainj 15:30, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Reply

1. I agree with you that "block democracy" should be deleted since this is an original proposal on my part. However, if I were to write an article -- independently of Wikipedia -- on block democracy, then because such an idea would then exist on the Internet, it would then qualify for inclusion. Don't you agree? But for the time being, a deletion is fine.

Actually no. Using your own, non-peer reviewed, self-published "research" as a basis for an article is not permitted. It's good that you asked. Rklawton 16:06, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

2. As to the notices on the "bottom-up democracy," I would appreciate if you made a judgment call and either remove the notices, or let me know what improvements can be made -- or even make them yourself.

Thanks.

Skovoroda 16:39, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

1. a) That's OK but you must please leave the page as it is, if it is to be deleted without a vote. Blanking a page won't delete it; as it has been created, so it must stay up for the full five days (someone else may decide it is an article worth keeping). After the five days it will be deleted by an administrator.

b) Yes and no. Simply creating a proposal and having it published on the web doesn't count. Nor does other self publishing count. You must write the proposal and have it published in a notable journal or reported on in a reputable newspaper. Please see WP:NOR for full details, but note this quote from the policy: "The fact that we exclude something does not necessarily mean the material is bad — it simply means that Wikipedia is not the proper venue for it. We would have to turn away even Pulitzer-level journalism and Nobel-level science if its authors tried to publish it first on Wikipedia. If you have an idea that you think should become part of the corpus of knowledge that is Wikipedia, the best approach is to arrange to have your results published in a peer-reviewed journal or reputable news outlet, and then document your work in an appropriately non-partisan manner."

2. I will look at the articles and clean them up. Its possible from what you said earlier that the sources may still not be OK (I'll check them out). Also you need to be careful how you write the articles, they are not essays, but they are reporting facts. If I don't get a chance to clean them up properly, I'll put clean up tags on them and other people will come and help. Please remember this is a Wiki, so no one person is senior to anyone els, if you feel the tags are innapropriate remove them and we (together with anyone else interested) can discuss (and reach consensus hopefully) on the talk page.

Captainj 20:12, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

==Bottom up democracy cleanup==

OK, I've just finished cleaning up this article. More information could no doubt be added, but please bear in mind these points:

• Chomsky is not a good person to use for factual type references. A quick search shows him to be a very left wing American political activist, his views are unlikely to be neutral, and so represent a POV. Best to use him to illustrate one side of an argument (but this should be balanced by someone else).

• If you want good sources, use reputable news outlets. The two I like to use are BBC News and The Guardian though both are British. Be careful though, even there, to differentiate between opinion articles (which are OK to quote but probably not as a source of "facts") and factual news reporting. The Guardian in particular can be left wing in its Opinion articles (though my experience is that it is usually fair and neutral).

• If you give an example, try to make it a real life one (like the Soviet Democracy one you gave).

• Keep up the good work.

Captainj 16:14, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

---

1. I don't know what a neutral view on politics can possibly be. We are not dealing here with factual matters but matters of value. There are only views and values of people to deal with -- Chomsky's views, Bush's views, Christ's view, your view, my view.

2. Why did you take out the claim that anarchism is a form of bottom-up democracy?

Skovoroda 17:33, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Please see article talk page Captainj 21:10, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

I left some answers to your question on the Talk:Bottom-up democracy page. - David Oberst 01:19, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

AfD on Bottom-up democracy

Please don't take my mock-extension of your Smith/Jones conversation on the AfD page too personally. However, this whole thing is a bit frustrating. It isn't that "bottom-up democracy" is a non-existent phrase, or that it isn't used (or useful) in describing theoretical concepts like Foldvary's "cellular democracy" example, etc. But a general division of representative democracies into "bottom-up" and "top-down" is not general usage, and has no place as a major distinction in a high-level overview article such as Democracy. The Bottom-up democracy article in all its versions has been a incoherant hodge-podge of semi-related ideas and poor writing. Certainly dumping my informal comments from a Talk page into the article willy-nilly was not useful, and the mixture of of question/answer, conversational format, and block quotations reads more like notes for an article rather than an article itself. David Oberst 17:24, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Reply

Your claim: "But a general division of representative democracies into "bottom-up" and "top-down" is not general usage, and has no place as a major distinction in a high-level overview article such as Democracy." When making distinctions, a dicotemous distinction is better than a tripart distinction, for example. Dividing "Democracy" into "Direct" and "Indirect or Representative" seems to be exhaustive -- so that is a good division. If we want to make a similar dicotemous division of representative democracies, what will work so that the divisions are exhaustive? The "bottom-up" and "top-down" seems to work. Do you know of a better dicotemous distinction?Skovoroda 20:39, 2 June 2006 (UTC) P.S. I thought Wikipedia is a cooperative endeavor. Why should I be responsible for cleaning up things that you think are sloppy. Pitch-in and do some house-cleaning if you see places for improvement. My ego or my identity are not involved in this effort. But I am curious to see how far rationality can survive in this "democratic" forum.

Land & liberty

Dear Skovoroda! Please refrain from inserting stuff about Stalin, Holodomor and Mexin Revolution into the article. It is absolutely irrelevant. If you feel like writing an article about Hertzen's Land & Liberty, create a separate article and then we'll make a disambig page. KNewman 07:00, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

• Please make a disambiguation page and we will move things into their separate pages.Skovoroda 16:51, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Some comments

• It looks like many of your edits happen when you are not logged into your account (see list). This makes them show up as being contributed by anonymous User:68.20.192.126 (your computer address). I suspect your browser may not always be remembering your login information - if you look at the top center of the screen you should see a small icon followed by "Skovoroda my talk my preferences...". If it shows "Sign in/create account" instead, you are not logged in as "Skovoroda". Not only does this split your contributions between two (or more) accounts, but many editors are somewhat more sceptical about anonymous IP contributions, and especially on Talk and Deletion discussions may mistakenly jump to the conclusion that you are trying to make yourself appear to be multiple contributors.

• In regards to the quote from a certain "Andrew Chrucky" in the liberal education article, you may wish to read WP:AUTO; this is an area that can result in various misunderstandings and should be avoided where possible.

• I've made some comments on the Talk:Delegative democracy page - I'll likely be nominating the article for deletion.

Regards, - David Oberst 20:04, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

AfD Nomination Delegative democracy

I've nominated the article Delegative democracy for deletion under the Articles for deletion process. We appreciate your contributions, but in this particular case I do not feel that Delegative democracy satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion. I have explained why in the nomination space (see What Wikipedia is not and Deletion policy). Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Delegative democracy. Don't forget to add four tildes (˜˜˜˜) at the end of each of your comments to sign them. You are free to edit the content of Delegative democracy during the discussion, but please do not remove the "Articles for Deletion" template (the box at the top). Doing so will not end the discussion. David Oberst 07:20, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

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