Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 11:20, 20 July 2012

ArbCom has proven how dysfunctional it really is to support a desysop of not one but two good servicing Sysops (Admins) over one small incident.

It looks like we're safe!

It appears that we don't need to worry about Jrtayloriv starting an edit war on the Indonesian killings page, since he has left it alone. Thank goodness! He can be a real pain. I have no idea how he can accuse me of "deleting well-referenced material", since he's made a career of it. On articles like Hugo Chavez and Che Guevarra, he has freely removed thousands of characters and offered one word explanations like "POV". He once deleted 41,000 characters from the "bureaucracy" article. Even if this was justified, it boggles the mind that he would demand an explanation for each sentence I cut in the Indonesian article; surely he knows that bold changes can be neccessary. The issue may be that he is obsessed with bizarre conspiracy theories: For example, he argued (in the article on CIA activities in Iran) that there should be a section devoted to allegations that the Iranian Revolution was really an Anglo-American plot to surround the USSR with hostile Islamic states (based on worthless sources, some of which were profoundly misread or even unrelated). I did remove that eventually, but predictably he now accuses me of being a "censor". The fact is, I generally avoid editing articles that he frequents, because those (like him) with enough time and dedication will eventually be able to shape Misplaced Pages to their will. Without endorsing or rebuking your proposal to integrate the section on "foreign involvement" into the rest of the text, I will say that at the very least "foreign involvement" should not attract the same level of controversy as a section specifically devoted to condemnations of the US.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 07:03, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether the situation has improved, as I don't get around wikipedia as much as I used to a few years ago, however, it used to be that "US Involvement" sections were everywhere, and were largely a dumping ground for condemnation of the US, often with undertones (or overtones!) of CIA conspiracy. Or just plain old leftist bias against the right. They weren't much better than the "Criticism" sections that are also becoming less prevalent. Oh, and there were also the issues that you raised. The silliest thing was that editors building up that section never talk about Sukarno's relationship with China and the USSR, let alone in equally condematory tone.

I'm by no means an apologist for the US, and indeed one of the main drivers of me creating the article (and I didn't write a short article either!) was my continued sadness that these events are barely discussed in Indonesia. They are certainly not part of any school curriculum. The New Order version remains the "true", indeed the only version - i.e., that evil communists murdered 6 national heroes (the generals) and that the implication was that Sukarno was involved. There was a literal book burning (in 2004?) of a new school text book that touched on the fact that there were also mass killings. There's never any credence paid to credible (but unproven) theories that Suharto may have been behind it, in full (unlikely) or in part (not improbable).

The best thing that has come out of this - an I'm quite proud of this and wikipedia - is the article has been translated into Indonesian wikipedia and it is a feature article on their site. AWESOME! the info is there for people to read, even if the schools don't teach it.

As I mentioned before, that section had long bugged me, but wasn't brave enough to clean it up. However, let me suggest that the reason it stuck - so far at least - was because your/my case is sound. cheers --Merbabu (talk) 09:12, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Horhey420 "suspects" you! He's on to us!

LOL.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:22, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Niether Horhey's line of reasoning or indeed his use of English are making much sense (not to me anyway). He won't address specific questions, but at the same time comes back with incomprehensible, irrelevant, and/or strawman arguements. It reminds me of that "playing chess with pigeons" joke - ie, they kick all the pieces over, shit all over the board, then march around victorious. Oh, and Horhey throws in a bit of moral outrage - ie, "shame on you".

I only respond further because it seems that he feels he is in the right and I sense that if he's not convinced otherwise, he will end up re-instating the bad version. On the other hand, responding just seems to feed him (no, I'm not saying he's a troll) and drags the fruitless discussion on and on. I'm going to resist responding further. --Merbabu (talk) 23:04, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Chinese Indonesians

I saw you removed the Chinese characters from the article and intend to also remove the Indonesian phrase ostensibly because this is the english wikipedia. Let me suggest the reason we should leave those phrase in, is because those are the names the subject of the article are called in their native languages. We don't need to limit ourselves to the English language, particularly when the subject is a non-english language subject. For any subject, we use and define the proper terms as they would be used within the field. Trackinfo (talk) 11:39, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Who's we? So your answer "it's what we do"? How are chinese characters useful in English wikipedia? --Merbabu (talk) 12:29, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

The selective use of a few Chinese characters doesn't seem to do any harm and is (for some of us) quite helpful. In fact, the use of Chinese characters is increasing in Indonesia so to have access to rather selective illustrations of a name (of a person, for example) in Chinese characters surely does no harm, and for some English users of Misplaced Pages is useful. I would support the selective use of both bahasa Indonesia and Chinese characters when it is reasonable to do so. At least one minister of the current government has Chinese characters listed against the name on Misplaced Pages at present and it would be a great pity to change this. If Chinese characters have been removed as Trackinfo says, then I'd like to see them put back again. Pmccawley (talk) 10:10, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

OK, Chinese names everywhere. Let's throw the Jawi names into. And the Javanese script just to be sure. What about Dutch? What are my Dutch, Jawi, Chinese, Malay, and Malaysian names? --Merbabu (talk) 10:14, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree. And I admit that I'm not quite sure exactly how to deal with the issue. For me, it needs to be a matter of judgement. And reasonable people will doubtless disagree at times over what the right judgement is. I agree that it hardly makes sense to have lots of entries about Indonesia on Misplaced Pages deliberately scattered with lots of Javanese (or Sundanese, or Balinese) words, or any of the other numerous languages that one might cite. My own view -- which some will disagree with -- is that the "reasonable" and occasional injection of non-English references is not inappropriate provided it is done with care. I'd argue that this will often enrich the text. But I realise that there will be differences of view about this. Pmccawley (talk) 14:45, 19 July 2012 (UTC)