User talk:David Finn: Difference between revisions

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==Physical activity==
== Re re-approval of [[Boiling point/Draft]] ==
Nice to see someone else editing [[physical activity]]. Aside from the clunkiness of my wording, looks like I was trying to reflect the [[National Library of Medicine]] definitions that distinguish physical activity from exercise. I think you are right that the WHO wording seems cleaner. Feel free to change and add, etc. - [[User:Robert Badgett|Robert Badgett]] 21:28, 23 November 2011 (UTC)


:I guessed that is what happened. I'll take a look at the article again presently, and thanks for getting back to me. [[User:David Finn|David Finn]] 09:40, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
David, will you please review Milton's responses to your comments on th Talk page regarding [[Boiling point/Draft]], and note on the Talk page whether you consider them satisfactory, and if not, why not.


== Thanks ==
Also, would you give your assessment of the article as to its meriting re-approval.


David, thanks for the format help for [[Biolinguistics/Bibliography]]. Bedtime beckoned before I could finish.  Nice of you to take on a tedious chore. Do you have an automated way to do it?  [[User:Anthony.Sebastian|Anthony.Sebastian]] 00:06, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
Thank you. —[[User:Anthony.Sebastian|Anthony.Sebastian]] 03:08, 29 February 2012 (UTC), Approval Manager.


:My pleasure, Anthony. I know precisely nothing about biolinguistics but the great thing about it being a wiki is that we can all help in little ways. I just copy/pasted the asterisk and went down the page adding it to each line. The hard work was already done by you, and thanks for being one of our top contributors. [[User:David Finn|David Finn]] 08:59, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
:I see the approval process overtook my timeframe for answering these questions. Well done Anthony, in just a few weeks you managed our first article approval in a very long time! Ok, only a re-approval, but it's a good start. For the record I think the small addition to the introduction of the draft article made a big difference to the amount of people who would try to use that article. My concerns were the same as yours - of course we shouldn't eliminate the scientific information, that would be ridiculous, but we should certainly try where possible to introduce all readers to a topic in a way they can understand, with increasing complexity as the reader progresses. That is, of course, why we have subpages and the like. Keep up the good work! [[User:David Finn|David Finn]] 07:35, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
 
== Thanks for your support. ==
 
Mr. David Finn: Thanks for your words supporting the existence and the lack of racism in the "White Argentine" article. Anyway, I've realized that Citizendium has too many rules and laws that prevent more possibly interested users to contribute. I really had any racist idea when i wrote it, but these are times in which you are allowed to show/demonstrate your pride if you are Black or have Black African ancestry, or if you are Amerindian or have Amerindian ancestry. Nevertheless, if you are White or have European ancestry and demonstrate it, you are automatically labelled as "racist", "nazi", etc. Besides, there are other wikisites which have an article on White Argentines in them so, this is no great loss, especially for a wikisite which only has 15,000 articles. Again, I thank you for you selfless support and contribution to the discussion. Thanks.--[[User:Pablo Martín Zampini|Pablo Martín Zampini]] 19:35, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
 
:You are very welcome Pablo. I'm only sorry that our efforts were unable to bring about a reasonable response from the other participants. Peter Jackson and I must have asked at least a half-dozen times for examples of what might be considered racism in the article, to no avail. I am sorry to say I do not think even one of them stopped to read the article, and all we got in return were some feeble excuses about whether race is a suitable topic for conversation.
 
:Your article was opposed on ideological grounds - that is not the way to build an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia describes neutrally all that exists and is of importance, it doesn't choose which subjects to represent based on the ideological difficulties of its mainly white middle-class participants.
 
:A real encyclopedia would approach the subject like so - first they would google the title of the article and see if the term is widely used. That being the case they would check the information in the article for accuracy. Then an "expert" would review the entire article for neutrality, at this point checking that the article as a whole is not misrepresentative.
 
:At Citizendium did any of that happen? No. Some people who know little or nothing about the subject shouted "Racism!". Why? Some said that all articles with "White" in them were racist. Some said discussing race is racist! Some even said discussing race could lead to euthenasia (and no doubt genocide and a holocaust or two).
 
:Alas Pablo you are dealing with a site that has some funny ideas. Here "experts" are given precedence yet are rarely expert in the specific subject matter they are commenting on. The "experts" also have no requirement to be capable of interating with other humans, nor any requirement that they do any work here at all. Unfortunately this means a lot of people with opinions they cannot and therefore will not back up with fact, evidenced by their general lack of using links to support their comments.
 
:It is amusing to consider that many of those commenting on the article are white and middle class and old enough to have lived through periods of institutionalised racism in their own countries! This makes me think that the only racism in that article was to be found on the talkpage. This, as I am sure you know, is part of a wider Western racism, the kind that has been intitutionally racist, continues to be racist despite having dropped the racist policies, yet tries to stifle discussion of race (and down-play its own history) on the grounds of it being un-politically correct. In the olden days Westerners could be openly racist, nowadays in the spirit of political correctness they simply deny that there could be such a thing as racism and therefore we can't discuss the subject of race. Meanwhile the rest of the planet continues to suffer from the institutionalised racism. Try getting a fair price for your produce if you are African!
 
:You will know that in the USA one of the census options under "race" is "white". Lets imagine that Joe the Plumber fills in his census form and realises the only option for him is "white". He researches the term "white American" and finds it has an official government use. He finds that the use of the term in government and the census has a history to it. He finds that "white American" is a term that is to be found in popular culture - with both positive and negative connotations. But Joe the Plumber is neutral on the issue. He writes an article called "White American" and neutrally describes the use of and the history of the term.
 
:Lets say that Joe the Plumbers neighbour, who has identified as "African American" on the census, writes a long and neutral article on the word "nigger", and its history from the earliest times right up to its use in modern day music. It would even talk about [[Crime fiction/Catalogs/Famous books|Agatha Christies famous book]], so it isn't like Citizendium has never used the "n word".
 
:Do you think either of these articles would be considered any less "racist" by the good folk at Citizendium than "White Argentine" was? Do you think they would be any more likely to actually read the article text rather than simply rejecting the articles on ideological grounds? That should be the difference between writing an encyclopedia and writing a propoganda manual and I don't think Citizendium succeeds.
 
:You are sadly right about the rejection of the article being no big loss to the world - statistics show that the only people using this site are the few contributors left, which means nobody would have ever seen your article. This is because we have an ideological hardcore of contributors who contribute little but have frightened off everyone else. However, if we ever get enough contributors to make the site worthwhile we should also then have a higher number of people actually willing to do some research. Should that happen the opinions of the ideological hardcore would be less overpowering. So take heart Pablo - right now this site may not be worth contributing to, but if it ever becomes so it will be because there are enough people here to genuinely evaluate your article. They may still reject the article, I'm not saying it was perfect, but at least they would be able to give you a better reason than any you have received so far! [[User:David Finn|David Finn]] 07:37, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
 
::There appears to be a common thread [http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/28/us/arizona-ethnic-studies/index.html here]. [[User:D. Matt Innis|D. Matt Innis]] 02:19, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 
::Interesting you should mention Agatha Christie's book, as it's now been renamed. On the otehr hand, Joseph Conrad's book hasn't. Class discrimination? [[User:Peter Jackson|Peter Jackson]] 11:09, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Latest revision as of 09:45, 15 April 2012

Re re-approval of Boiling point/Draft

David, will you please review Milton's responses to your comments on th Talk page regarding Boiling point/Draft, and note on the Talk page whether you consider them satisfactory, and if not, why not.

Also, would you give your assessment of the article as to its meriting re-approval.

Thank you. —Anthony.Sebastian 03:08, 29 February 2012 (UTC), Approval Manager.

I see the approval process overtook my timeframe for answering these questions. Well done Anthony, in just a few weeks you managed our first article approval in a very long time! Ok, only a re-approval, but it's a good start. For the record I think the small addition to the introduction of the draft article made a big difference to the amount of people who would try to use that article. My concerns were the same as yours - of course we shouldn't eliminate the scientific information, that would be ridiculous, but we should certainly try where possible to introduce all readers to a topic in a way they can understand, with increasing complexity as the reader progresses. That is, of course, why we have subpages and the like. Keep up the good work! David Finn 07:35, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
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