Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 15:16, 22 May 2013

General note

Looks interesting. thanks for all your work on this. --Sm8900 (talk) 15:44, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

My edit

I agree that looks poor, but what was there before was gave extreme undue weight to the source"s" and only showed one example (disguised as "many souces") from one side, and nothing from the other side. Sepsis II (talk) 18:20, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm opposed to that change although I understand your concern about statements without evidence, but I think that statement was always meant to be a summary of a large number of sources that have been looked at over the years. Having said that, your concern there appears to be somewhat asymmetric given that you didn't alter 'In prose, objective sources...'. I think what the original statement is intended to convey is that some sources (I'm not sure of the extent and probably tertiary) say "Capital: Jerusalem" in their equivalent of infoboxes (when there is little room for nuance) but in prose, even in the same sources, they elaborate. My concerns aren't quite the same as yours. I don't think the 'consider it correct to ' should be there or perhaps the 'objective' either but we are so close to the RfC that I would rather leave the original wording than mess with it if there is a risk of starting a fire. Sean.hoyland - talk 19:01, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I would also support the change to 'objective'. If someone wants to they can add more sources to make 'many sources' a true statement though I would then add more sources that leave the capital of Israel as blank to keep as far as I know, the real life occurance in balance. Sepsis II (talk) 21:03, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree that consider it correct to and objective are superfluous and should be removed. -- tariqabjotu 23:08, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, this isn't going to work for me. Alongside your addition of a statement that was removed, this looks bad.

You keep re-adding the statement No news agency with a guideline for neutral reporting allows Jerusalem to be reported as the capital of Israel., even though it was removed in accordance with Step 3, Question 2. Why is that back in the RfC, at the top no less? It seems like a very generous summary of the sources it references and it misses the problems with relying on news sources (which have been raised multiple times).

As for this other summary you keep editing, no other summary resorts to such ridiculous levels of precision. Heck, even the second half of your proposed rewording doesn't. You feel the need to specify what the Government of Canada (a source you unilaterally introduced) and the CIA do specifically. But, you're okay with saying that objective sources "often use qualifiers" in prose with just one source to back that up. Interesting.

If the problem truly is that the there aren't enough sources to back the statement "many" (an understandable concern), I would gladly furnish some more (like the multitude of encyclopedias that take the same approach). But butchering the wording to obfuscate the central point of the statement is not acceptable.

And the one source used to support the second half of the summary is not appropriate. The CIA Factbook does not use a qualifier when describing Israel's capital status. The CIA Factbook states:

Israel proclaimed Jerusalem as its capital in 1950, but the US, like all other countries, maintains its Embassy in Tel Aviv.

There is no qualifier there, where a qualifier is a word (as an adjective) or word group that limits or modifies the meaning of another word (as a noun) or word group. Proclaimed is being used as a verb, not an adjective; the source says Israel proclaimed Jerusalem as its capital, not Jerusalem is Israel's proclaimed capital. If we want to use the word qualifier, I suggest someone find some sources that actually used qualifiers (e.g. a source that says the latter formulation) after briefly listing Jerusalem as the capital. This is probably difficult to find. So, instead, I feel the summary should be reworded to something like "elaborate to say that the status as capital was achieved unilaterally", which I ultimately believe was the original intention of the statement anyway. -- tariqabjotu 23:08, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

It was only kept out by Mr S. because he didn't like the absoluteness of "no", so I have come up with a suitable alternative to make that 'no' less absolute.

I also removed the "the status as capital was achieved" bit because if the status of capital was achieved that would mean that the city is now the capital, an idea only shared by a very small minority. So I changed it to just say that sources elaborate on the city's status in prose. Sepsis II (talk) 01:11, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Okay, first off, the change you made was not the change I was suggesting. I objected to the word qualifier, so obviously I wanted that removed. Here is what I thought the phrase should say:

...in prose, objective sources often elaborate to say that the status as capital was achieved unilaterally.

Second, you should not be making these changes. As Mr. S noted in his remarks on everyone's talk pages, you should be discussing proposed changes that aren't minor and uncontroversial. At this stage, it might be reasonable to suspect that omitting consider it correct to and objective from the summary statement in question might be minor and uncontroversial given that we have three people (you, me, and Sean) agreeing to it, but it is clear there is no consensus on the remainder, and you should have raised your objections on the talk page here rather than simply implementing the changes you believe should have been made. You'd think after getting some comments in response to your initial changes, you'd tread more cautiously... but I'm dismayed to see you, in addition to not doing that, proceeding by making more undiscussed changes.

The opportunity to discuss these statements has already passed, and at this stage we should only be making small alterations, correcting oversights that don't alter the original meaning of the statement. So changing...

Many sources consider it correct to list Jerusalem as the capital of Israel when there is little room for nuance, but in prose, objective sources often use qualifiers which show that the status as capital was achieved unilaterally.

...to...

The CIA lists Jerusalem as the capital of Israel while the government of Canada leaves the capital of Israel blank when there was little room for nuance. In prose, sources often use qualifiers to elaborate on the city's status to the respective states.

...is not acceptable at this point.

Third, your interpretation of what is acceptable is not absolute. Mr. S's closure of Step 3, Question 2, Statement 12, said:

There was agreement that it is hard to justify the absolute use of "no", and no alternative wordings were produced. Because of this, I'm not including this statement, but with no prejudice against including a more softly worded version later if there is consensus for that.

Let me repeat those last few words: if there is consensus for that. There is currently no consensus for your refactored Statement 12. You have unilaterally proposed it and implemented it; therefore, it should not be added yet, and you should open discussion on your proposed rewording here.

Seeing as you didn't seem to understand the discuss-first idea, even when you were gently prodded about it, I'm reverting your modifications. Please discuss controversial changes here first. -- tariqabjotu 06:21, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Sepsis, I have to agree with Tariq here. I didn't declare there to be no consensus to include the statement because of my personal views about it - my close was intended to reflect the views of all the editors that participated in that discussion. A consensus for inclusion would have to include at least some of the editors that participated in that discussion, and I can't see any evidence of that having happened. There might have been a chance to form such a consensus, say, a week ago, but with the RfC scheduled to start tomorrow, I'm afraid the train has left the station on this one. If you want to include your statement in the RfC, you will have to include it in the discussion section rather than the source summary. The same holds for the "Many sources consider it correct" statement - there simply isn't enough time any more for us to generate the new consensus that would be necessary to revise it. — Mr. Stradivarius 08:50, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, then by that standard, changing use qualifiers which show that to elaborate to say that or elaborate to show that may be too much of a change to request at this point. But I would like to make the case that the current wording is just wrong: every definition (e.g. ) of qualifier I've found (this source, for example, goes into great detail about what a qualifier is) suggests that no qualifier is used in the referring source (i.e. the CIA World Factbook), as nothing is modifying the word capital. This looks simply to be the case of a incorrect word being used. I'd alternately be okay with qualify the statement to show that if a form of the word qualify is preferred to not change the intended meaning. Either way, I don't feel the change I suggested goes against the intention of the summary statement; it merely replaces a word that is demonstrably incorrect in the case.

That being said, if this doesn't get changed in time, I'm not going to lose sleep over it; participants may not be able to detect the difference anyway, just as I hadn't noticed it until now. There's also only one draft here (Draft 5) that actually includes a qualifier, so the incorrect use of qualifiers may not have a noticeable effect. May not. -- tariqabjotu 14:11, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Link to Positions on Jerusalem

Sm8900 added a link to Misplaced Pages's article Positions on Jerusalem. I reverted it because it hadn't been discussed and the statement was signed. However, as none of us have so far made any strides to write the introduction (as noted by Mr. S), I don't think it would be too much to ask that a link to that article be incorporated somewhere in the intro to this RfC. The link (which has probably been reasonably vetted due to its hotly contested nature) would provide more background information for participants who are not familiar with this conflict -- and also let participants know that that article exists. -- tariqabjotu 15:16, 22 May 2013 (UTC)