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Happy Holidays, everyone. It occured to me that in coming months, media attention will once again focus on this subject. *shudders* Wikipedia, and this article, have been called the best, most balanced sources of information on Terri and the tragedy that surrounded her. But, we all know we can do better. Let's do this:
To achieve this, we must work together. Some things I'd like to see:
What are your thoughts?-- ghost 17:57, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
"Dr. Stephen J. Nelson, P.A., cautioned that "[n]europathologic examination alone of the decedent’s brain – or any brain for that matter – cannot prove or disprove a diagnosis of persistent vegetative state or minimally conscious state."
This is puzzling to me. If a corpse were autopsied and zero brain matter was found - ie., the cranium was completely empty, not that this is likely to ever happen - would that not be enough evidence of "minimal consciousness"? Surely so. And finding an undamaged brain would seem to at least give a firm indication for healthy brain function. So surely there is some dividing line between intact and vanished, which could be an indicator for or against the presence of PVS during life; remove neurons one by one and eventually, PVS will occur, doubtless before the skull is entirely empty; yet what remains can be called a "brain". Is Dr. Nelson saying that medical knowledge has not yet discovered where that line lies, or that there is still controversy over where it lies? Is it impossible to simply state a ballpark probability of minimal brain function based on neuronal damage? It certainly seems plausible, even if science hasn't reached that point yet. Therefore his blanket statement, when he says "any brain" cannot yield the information required for diagnosis, seems ridiculous and overly general. Thoughts? - Kasreyn 08:53, 25 December 2005 (UTC).
First of all, it's what he said. We report what he said, not whether we feel it works. Second, he said it because, as he made clear, both PVS and MCS are clinical diagnoses, whose pathological basis has not been agreed, so his findings cannot be taken to support either. Ronabop is spot on, I think. He's not saying knowing knows where the line is. He's saying no one has established there is a line. Grace Note 04:59, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
Where is the source that he was the Schindler's family doctor? I have a blog mentioning him as their family friend which does not seem reliable. Radiologists do not function as family doctors. -- DocJohnny 12:39, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
edits removed by originator
Actually, it's not a Neruda poem. All round the net you can find people thinking that it is, but it doesn't seem that it is. If anyone knows who did write it, please give me a message or an email. Grace Note 03:01, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
edits removed by originator
Anon user 24.194.166.146 removed the following link from the Advocacy and Commentary section:
And added the following links:
Can we please review these and see if the link are/aren't appropriate?-- ghost 15:24, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Someone sent me the following note: Hello 84.148.98.22, (that was ROHA) and welcome to Wikipedia!... (Welcome Template) Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes ( 84.148.79.1 07:57, 12 January 2006 (UTC)); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you have any questions, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! --Hurricane111 05:33, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
And I answered to this someone (while it talks about the innocent boxer HURRICANE, it has only to do with the innocent Terri Schiavo and the US jurisdictation:)
Do you remember the HURRICANE, the boxer, who was once sentenced to death, while he was completely innocent ? Bob Dylan visited this boxer within his prison cell. Dylan talked with Hurricane. When he left the prison, he wrote the song "Hurricane". This song he published in his album "Desire". Soon after, other people found that the boxer "Hurricane" could not have commited the murder by any chance. Some intelligent people found out, that "Hurricane" could not have, by logic, been the murderer. So they decided: "Hurricane" is not guilty of the murder. So this man was released after a too long time from an American prison. But finally he was a free man. He was not freed because there was a Wikipedia, no. He was freed because there was only one intelligent man who found out and believed that "Hurricane" was completely innocent. Now you may guess the name of this man. (Please publish this my text and your answer to the relevant Wiki discussion pages. Thanks for that.) Hans Rosenthal (ROHA) (hans.rosenthal AT t-online.de -- replace AT by @ ) (1201200) PS: Not that someone gets me wrong: It was certainly the right decision to let Terri go away in a painless way, but it was not the right way to let her husband suffer to help his wife to leave him in such a merciful way.
I'm new, so I don't know how to go about filing a complaint on this.
But it appears that user 209.173.6.202 is going around defacing entries. For example, saying Terri Schiavo deserved to die and that someone else's childhood was miserable after he found out his father was gay, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by NiftyDude ( talk • contribs) 18:52, 17 January 2006
This story is long and complicated enough that the lead paragraph really should only say one thing: Why this story is important. No hair-splitting about all the medical details; just the big, obvious pieces for the person who has never heard of this story before. Terri Schaivo is not notable because she lived and died; she is notable because of the legal and political struggle that occurred around her. -- Pinktulip 07:52, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
ML has reverted the intro back and I was partly waiting for her and others' input before doing the change myself. I don't believe radical surgery is required. Most precisely, "The lead should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article in such a way that it could stand on its own as a concise version of the article" ( WP:LEAD). The lead as it stood at the beginning of the day (and stands now) more or less agrees with this. It is rather lengthy but this is as appropriate as the length of lead should correspond to the length of the article. And note that Pink's lead actually increased article size, which we don't need. Marskell 14:30, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
At the top level:
Look at the paragraph now. Low on details? Yes. Just the high-level concepts to answer the question: "What happened? Why does it matter?". Look at the brief version. Every sentance is essential. That is part of what is ment by brilliant prose. Is that not the goal? -- Pinktulip 22:42, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
I have been reverted twice. I give up. You guys want to obsess about your favorite details or blindly defend the status quo. It is small wonder that this never made it to FA. -- Pinktulip 23:13, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
"...whose medical and family circumstances and attendant legal battles fueled intense media attention and led to several high-profile court decisions and involvement by prominent politicians and interest groups."
The reader's eyes glaze over as they realize that the group that wrote this cannot write simple, clear, direct NPOV sentances about just the very biggest chuncks of the story because they, as a consensus group, are obsessed about not offending this or that sub-group.
What is it trying to say? "The story got a lot of publicity." Is that REALLY why the story is so important? I do not think so. That kind of thing happens whenever ANYTHING gets a lot of publicity.
I encourage you to look at the lead paragraphs (which I worked on and which have been slighly diluted since then) in:
The lead paragrphas get to the point of how the crews were killed and mentions the impact to Space program. That is what was historically Important. You could easily drown either of those lead paragraphs with engineering details or other facts, but it would be disservice to the reader. -- Pinktulip 02:35, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
It is almost as if the police arrived at my door, sat me down, spent five minutes going over some police report and then finally tell me that my mother is dead (actually, my mother is still alive). But because they are police, they go through some process and then finally tell me what is Important. Of course, police do not really do that either, but that is what the current lead section reads like. It should be half the size that it currently is. -- Pinktulip 05:45, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
OK, since you guys will not accept an executive plan about the historical importance of TS, the challenge is just to find the next big piece of the current oversized article that can be broken out into its own article. Any suggestions? -- Pinktulip 00:06, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Now I see what the problem is: You people think that this is that "Terri Schiavo medical data" article. That is one of the reasons why this article is so hopeless not "FA" quality. I am aware that some judicial decisions might have been based on some medical details, but it is the medical info that is bulky. We can also have a TS "fourteen appeals" article, if you like. Were any of you even aware that that there is a TS timeline article (for which I addded a ref to a "See Also" section)? Any objections to starting a TS "medical data" article and moving most of the bulky medical info there? -- Pinktulip 00:55, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Do you not get it? What happened Politically is more Important that what happened in the Courts (except when it negated the politics), and what happened in the Courts is more Important than what happened in the Hospital. And that is not always true, but it is true in this case. I still say you guys just want to re-fight the Court battles. That approach will consume your writing space (and the reader's patience) faster than almost any other. -- Pinktulip 21:35, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
I want you all to go look at
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Terri_Schiavo
Look at the difference in emphasis. It is not exactly our style, but uses the same technology as we do. Learn from it. -- Pinktulip 07:30, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
What a beautiful decision: The super-long list of external links are on a separate page:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Terri_Schiavo:_External_Links
but you guys are using internal references, so that huge gob of data has to stay on this page.
BTW: I am not accusing you guys of http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Marketing_Terri_Schiavo -- Pinktulip 09:18, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
I do not mean that as an insult to any one of you, but as an ensemble, you represent mental illness because of what you are doing with this page. Here is what you are doing: You are re-fighting the court battles and DROWNING this story in details. You really need to delegate all the legal stuff to a separate page (or multiple pages, if it bloats like that). Just my trying to fight the link rot this page is painful because there are too many references. Wikipedia technology breaks down after about 20 references and it becomes hard to use. You have 70. No wonder the quality and readability of the article is so low. -- Pinktulip 11:29, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Another example of brillaitn prose:
This lead paragraph was nice short:
But that is not good enough, because the Bee Gees were also Great (in the pop musical world). Some people say that they were greater than the Beetles. Why? How do you say it in as few words as possible? I put it my way with this additional text:
In case you do not recall: two years ago, Maurice died suddenly. I point this out because that means that, to hear tha sound again, you will to listen to their recorded music. I am not promoting the Bee Gees. I am simply answering the question: "Why were they Great?"
Brilliant prose is about demonstrating in as few words as possible that you know exactly why what you are writing about is Important. The Bee Gees were Important because of their Sound. Notice I do not use the word "trio"? It is because some of you pathetic fault-finders will tut-tut me and point out that, for a few early years, they were a quinitet, so I just give up on that word pre-emptively. I still want get some brilliant prose into the TS article, especially the lead section.
I am still looking for the most terse, elegant and appropriate way to indicate that they wrote a lot of their own songs and they stood physically close together in their live concerts. It is not because I like them (well, their music is infectious and nice), it is because that also was part of their Success.
When I wrote "I give up" above, I ment it. I am not going to edit the text mich anymore and I am not going to propose my stuff again in order to run through some gauntlet of reverters. I am going to browbeat you people into doing the right thing. My job is point out why the current article sucks. I have no problem with consensus building, but what you guys have created through your consensus building is too fluffy. You should pare it down and de-crapify it. -- Pinktulip 00:54, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
I will just keep on waving the lead section of http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Terri_Schiavo in your faces as it gets better and better. And do you notice how low-data the opening of 9/11 is now? And the Shuttles? There is a very god reason for that: these stories are complicated. Very long and complicated. A good lead section will drive the rest of the article by declaring what is Important enough to spend more space on in this article. When the time comes to getting this article back down to 30 kilobytes or so (probably by breaking more stuff out into other pages), a good lead section will make the choices easier. See how that SourceWatch lead section evolves? Just bold, broad assertions that capture the essense of the story and just the big chuncks. No footnotes. Just the major players, the major movements, the decisive turning points and the historical context. Those other details, if they survive at all, can go in the LATER sections. -- Pinktulip 07:13, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
BTW: You see how that "See also" section I created is growing? Did any of you know about the TS timeline article? And look at Tirhas Habtegiris. Mr. Big Fish himself, was busy signing death warrants for hospital patients while back in Texas. Very interesting. -- Pinktulip 01:35, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Why does the article have font=75% footnotes? What WP styleguide is suggesting this? patsw 03:55, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
"...graduated from Archbishop Wood Catholic High School, a private school in nearby Warminster Township, Pennsylvania." The high school is already hyperlinked. It is a Catholic school, so I already know that it is a private school (BTW: I went to Catholic grade and high school). If I really want to know exactly where TS's high school was, I can click on the link. You wanna include TS's brother and siser's names? Fine (they are not notable, but I am unwilling to fight about it), but please do not adorn the hyperlinks with unnecessary verbiage. -- Pinktulip 05:24, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
We need to delegate some of the information to a subpage. How about this? We take everything from
to
and we put it in a subpage. We can call it "TS medical situation" or something like that. Refer to it in a section of a similar name and breifly summarize what the Courts would conclude based on that information. Even if this article is never makes FA, it will make the article better. BTW: I realize that the medical and court stuff is intertwined, but it can be quickly summarized. -- Pinktulip 23:35, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
BTW: I noticed on the TS timeline article that Michael married his girlfriend yesterday. Not quite quite notalbe/newsworthy enough to make the front page of any newspaper, but it is nice that we have a "timeline" subpage where tidbits like that can be added w/o being intrusive. -- Pinktulip 00:14, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
I have not heard objections in over 24 hours to the proposed subpage... -- Pinktulip 05:28, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
OK, I finally got to this. Since this is a branch, people should hold off making further changes or double fix any changes they makes, at least until we decide on if we want to commit to this delegation.
I have copied the "Initial medical crisis" as the intro to the subpage. It main article is still over 50 KB long. I still think we should conduct of "battle of the bulge" until we are down to 30 KB, but I certainly do not insist. Perhaps we could also move "Oral feeding II" and "Autopsy" down there as well? We could also just go for yet another subpage: a "Terri Schiavo external links" page. That would help on a size a little (another 7KB). I would like some feedback on this. -- Pinktulip 11:31, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
I propose to standardize the font size of the text of the article to conform to the Wikipedia style and guidelines by removing the size=75% on the Notes and References section. Personally, I have to reset my browsers font size to read them, so I suspect this is a genuine web accessibility problem. What support do you find in the Wikipedia style and guidelines for using size=75%? patsw 04:02, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
In the interests of thrashing out a viable solution to the bloat of the article, Pinktulip has put together a suggested form for a subpage on the medical info associated with Terri Schiavo (link above). There's also a temp version of what the main article would look like. Your thoughts, please! I'm in favour, but the paragraph linking to the medical subpage will need redoing I think. Proto t c 21:18, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Let us keep the process forward-looking: Do we want this to be FA in 2006 or in 2007? If in 2006, then how are we going to get there? I suggest that some structural re-organization is imperative and I have made my specific recommendation. The lack of response tells me that, despite whatever battles have been fought in the past on this (be they in 2005 or back to 2003 or further), the number of soldiers in the armies on each side of the battlefield can now counted one hand. Simply put: most other people have moved on. Surely, those who might now object have been given ample notice and are being given ample time to respond. -- Pinktulip 21:36, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Ann and Pat: I appreciate that input, but let me point that this story now falls in the realm of historical narrative. Look at that SourceWatch article again: except for the lead section, it is just bunch of quotations. It that what we want? I do not think so. Good historical narrative requires that author get the facts straight and then make reasonable assertions within a coherent train of thought. Trying to constantly get some source to tell the story is likely to lose the reader, because the reader can sense that that author does not have enough mastery of the facts to state them clearly and confidently.
As far as I can tell, there are very few issues of fact that are both Important and still in dispute. I do not expect a lot of "he said"/"they said" between Michael and Terri's parents as some kind of dual-presentation within the aritlce text. We benefit from additional information, such as the autopsy, and so we are in a good position to come up with a single narrative.
I appreciate knowing that problematic and POV editors in the past have participated, but NCdave's last Wikipedia contribution was in July 2005. Clearly, he is now on indefinite, and I would guess permanent, Wikivaction. If I add some phrase that is POV (such as "allowed to die" or comatose rather than PVS), please assume that it is a technical error rather than some deep-seated POV and if you would simply reword such phrases (or ask me to do so, if you that that is more efficient) rather than revert all my changes, and please assume that such an action would resolve the disagreement.
On this business of the story being from Michael's POV: I am ill-informed about his public statements except that he did not make many of them relative to TS's parents. I also happen to feel that it was no accident TS's parents chose Randall Terry (please feel free to contribute to that article) as their spokeman. As I emailed to James Jewel recently:
Mr. Jewel responded to me in an email that he had no argument my using his quotations being in the RT article and also in the District of Columbia Civil Contempt Imprisonment Limitation Act. Obviously, he is clearly still on the pro-life side of the argument.
I am mentioning all this in order to point that that TS's parents did get their side of the story out to the public and their side of the story belongs in this article, but ultimately, they did not prevail, neither in the political arena, the courts, nor the hospital. This is not to argue that we surrender to that shallow adage that "History belongs to the winners", but one also has to face facts.
We all know how it turns out, but the story can still be told in a manner that is much more readable that the article in its current state. By "coherent train of thought", I am hoping that we can take a cue from Barbara Tuchman, who advises: Write the historical narrative as if you do not know how it is going to turn out. I am hoping that we can follow the events of 2003 to 2005 pretty much as they happened.
Again, my main goal is to elevate this article above its currently entrenched mediocrity. I refer you to William F. Buckley, Jr. article, and in particular this link in the article [1]. And in particular:
Pinktulip is not here to dispense POV inspiration. I am here to inspire good journalism. I am here to show that this story can be told in an FA-quality manner. All I want is for people who want to know "What happened?" in the Terri Schiavo story to come to this article to get a quick answer that covers most of the important points, fairly and accurately. That is my understanding of what Wikiepdia is for. -- Pinktulip 15:29, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
I am looking for when history seems to repeat itself. I want to point out some of my recent efforts:
I want you see how I have changed (I created the Morgan article under a different account) these articles and how they do form a pair, like a pair of bookends on a shelf. My perspective is legal and political (well, engineering/management in the case of the Shuttles). I want to point out what obvious parallels exist.
In the cases of Schiavo/Morgan, what interests me most are the judicial/political parallels. Both are cases of legislative intervention, which does not happen by accident. In both cases, conservative/religious forces formed the main thrust of that legislative intervention. I am attempting to point out the flaws in each intervention but not to otherwise judge those interventions.
I am saying this to share with you my true perspecitive on Schiavo's case. I want to you see how beautifully Simpson's trial is delegated, without whitewashing (pun intended) him as a person. Ultimately, we, as a society based on laws, have to accept the verdict of his criminal trial. Do you see how the Blake trail is NOT about the Simpson's trail, but about Simpson after his trial?
Again, the Shiavo medical info matters, but it can be framed and summarized. That is why I stress: the medical information is merely input to the judicial and political process. It can be summarized in the main article. -- Pinktulip 09:42, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
In this case, by "chops" I mean "skllls gained via practice" rather than some reference to amputation or burchering. O. J. Simpson and Noam Chomsky articles now have a bright future because of the delegation I have performed on them. Simpson no longer drowns in his trial, and Chomsky no longer drowns in his vast array of politics. Now, it is this article's turn. No meaningful objections have arisen. As you can see, my approach is iterative, so I am going to need several hours with no reversions please. It is going to be like a canine spleenectomy (which I have assisted in the performance of w/o loss of life): there will be a lot of litlte connections that need to get fixed up once the major mass is moved elsewhere. -- Pinktulip 02:41, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
You see how that works? You have shape the bridging paragraphs so that the segue into the following "2003" section that follows. Let me tell you what is going to happen for now: The reader is just going to become exasperated with the lead section and skip over it, hoping that the subsequent sections have a more coherent train of thought. The story has a tempo:
The point of all this is not to dramatize it. It is to make it clear to reader what periods of time were inconclusive and to rapidly proceed to those moments and decisions that were more decisive and thus, more Important when describing in the larger sense both what happened and why things went historicaly in one direction or the other. It is fine to talk about the lesser events that lead up to those decisive moments, but you have to make the cause-and-effect relationship of those lesser events to the decisive moment has to be constructed in a clear fashion. Otherwise, you are just presenting each reader with a pile jumbled facts and forcing them to figure out where those important, decisive moments came from. -- Pinktulip 04:48, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Her mother she could never stand, Sing rickety-tickety-tin, Her mother she could never stand, And so a cyanide soup she planned. The mother died with a spoon in her hand, And her face in a hideous grin, a grin, Her face in a hideous grin.
Part of Leher's comic effect is that he knows exactly what he is talking about. The Ballad is not quite as funny as his Vatican Rag (" Two, four, six, eight! Time to transubstantiate!) because the Ballad is a bit darker. (In the recording I've heard, you can hear those 20-something Catholic school girls out the in audience positively squeal with shock and laughter). The grin is a muscular thing or something. It is funny that Lehrer and Shirley Temple both live nearby me here in Palo Alto and neither of them want to talk about the past entertainment lives much now. Avoiding typecasting or getting on with their quite accomplished serious lives or something like that. Am I going on like like James Joyce now? I guess I am. It's my Irish mother's depressive influence, I guess. She grew up in Newfoundland. Anyway: Is it fair to first inform the viewer about the biological facts (or whatever you want to call such details)? -- Pinktulip 11:15, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Marskell: 1990 to 2003 was "inconclusive". The tube goes in and out and stuff, but nothing decisive happens. By then, Michael and the Schindlers are opponents of each other, but exactly how that happened just a soap opera. Now they are opponents and that is what matters. It is not like some priest or counselor is suddenly going to appear and make them all lovey-dovey now, is it? No, it is not. They are in a life-or-death struggle, and neither is going to back down. If I were making a TV movie, of course the soap opera would get its full ten minutes or whatever, but this is about Terri Schiavo. Her fate lies in the hand's of the courts (which are SO much more dull, dull, dull).
We can set up the context for the 2003 struggle and just take it from there. We already know Micheal wants so, he will remain almost mute for the rest of the story. Really, Terri is the same person with the same Soul in 2003 as she was in 1990/1991. All of the issues are the same. I feel that we still could use some more context in that 1990-2003 section, but the scene is now set. The story is pretty much the Schindler's story from here on in. 2003 is when things get more complicated because that is when more power players get involved and the story branches out into additional and simultaneous threads. That is what the reader will need help in understanding: All of those things and legal and political stuff all going on at the same time. -- Pinktulip 12:23, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
I've changed one place where scenario is used to "events".
The other place it needs to be changed is from "Medical Scenario" to "Medical Background" or something equivalent. patsw 05:02, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Done. -- Pinktulip 05:08, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
I think that the autopsy can go down into the medical subpage. The autopsy in and of itself is not a major event and it generally supports the assessment made in the 2003 bridge paragraphs. I can wait two days while we talk about this move. Feedback? -- Pinktulip 13:56, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
I am trying to highlight the fact that there are two major episodes of gov't intervention. I do not think that have a single "gov't intervention" section is going to work. It is too jarring to have two sections called "Terri's Law". It breaks the chronology. I have marked out the second "Terri's Law" section. The obvious change is to put it into chronological order and maybe just reference the gov't interversion subpage twice. I am going to think about this for a while and allow time for feedback. -- Pinktulip 14:38, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
I have to disagree with you on this one, AnnH. Now, if wikipedia were to state, "Michael Schiavo kept his promise", or "Terri Schiavo departed this earth February 25, 1990", then yes, that would be biased POV and unacceptable, and I would join you in removing it. But wikipedia reporting what the woman's gravestone says, is merely reporting the facts. Michael Schiavo obviously chose to use it as an opportunity to make a final stab in the direction of his critics. Some might see this as moving, and some might see this as petty. How about we let the readers decide? - Kasreyn 07:06, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
I think that it is helpful to reflect on the fact that MIchael authority over Terri was always his to lose. One false move, one moment of abuse, and his authority would have vanished. Once he decided his course in 1994 or 1999, his role in this saga is much like that of the Grim Reaper. Mute. Patient. Waiting for his turn. When everyone else gets out of the way, he swings his scythe without passion and, in ths story he has the final word. He choses to forever distinguish between brain death and biological death in Terri's epitaph. Hate him, love him or indifferent, it is by the retention of his authority that he gets the final word. Either he knew instinctively to mostly keep to keep his mouth shut or he had some good advice. -- Pinktulip 15:04, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
The "bitch" line belongs on Michael's article. They are just words. You want to get into Michael's head? You go to his page and take the measure of the man there. You get to talk about what he did to Terri on Terri's page, but that is it. I will wait for feedback before removing the "bitch" line again. -- Pinktulip 17:52, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't understand. This passage was about what Mrs Iyer said. This is part of what she said (actually I have just discovered the weasel word in there), so why remove it from this passage? Str1977 17:59, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
patsw removed the link to:
http://www.nndb.com/people/435/000026357/
I find that NNDB is not perfect, and at times are quite snide, but the information is usually pretty good. Their page certainly makes a large number of assertions of fact on the page. They cannot all be wrong. They jump to conclusions a few times. I would hope that patsw would take the time to notify them and us about their specific inaccurracies. Wholesale deleting of stuff as "inaccurate" is so easy with this wiki technology. Provinding accurate (or at least fair) information; now that is work.
Oh..... Is it the Ka-deficiency causing-the-heart-attack thing? I am still looking, but I noticed that http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/infopage.html says:
Did the court jump to conclusions also? What authoritative body refuted this finding?
I also noticed that this precious artifact:
which suggests that there was a pre-concieved notion that no heart attack (and therefore, not-so-much brain damage) occurred. But that theory seemed to have taken as much damage to its credibility as the "Nobel prize-winning" Dr. Hammesfahr's reputation has. And how come we do not refer to Dr. Michael Baden? That web page does and we have an article on him. Perhaps it is time to stitch him back into the story. As you can tell from the Elizabeth Morgan article, I am a big fan of using's Wikipedia's special powers to drag all the power players back in, especially if they have Wikipedia articles (and, if necessary, making new articles for them if they are notable enough).
I am going to move this down the "medical background" page, where is belongs. Really, the only question here is: Do we put the NNDB back in? I say we do. -- Pinktulip 20:59, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Check this out:
http://www.miami.edu/ethics/schiavo/1-24-01_DCA%20Opinion.pdf
District Court of Appeal, 2nd District Opinion filed January 24, 2001.
and that is pretty much how the Wikiepdia article is going read, unless someone has later and more authoritative information (and I do not mean some TV show). No need to link it to some bulemia thingy. Any objections? -- Pinktulip 21:50, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
You should explain a little more about what you mean by "lopsided". The "medical background" article is where we examine the medical stuff and we provide the conclusions, if any, in this article. If we need to, we can presentt the "he said"/"they said" dualities briefly if the courts did not make a finding. Both sides had plenty of money and time and competent attorneys and appeals. Yeah, people are sometimes wrongly convicted or wrongly exonerated, but this one is a clear case of the courts, for those matters that they addressed, as being the finder of fact. Who disagrees that we must defer to the findings of the courts in this case? -- Pinktulip 01:17, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure there's vandalism on this page, but I'm not in a position to go through and fix it all up because it's scattered throughout the edit history. Can someone do this please? - Richardcavell 05:27, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Richardcavell: Wow. You catch on quickly! You have made an astute observation in the article (one that I was going to make, but was not yet in the mood to). You correctly point out that the autopsy cannot demonstrate something about an electrolyte imbalance that might have happened 15 years earlier. I already ripped out (00:34, 6 February 2006) our inappropriate statement
Now, I am going to suggest that we just remove the entire paragraph and stop wasting the reader's time with all of these negative diagnoses. Personally, I am not very interested in what science cannot tell us about Terri, for I am sure that such a list would be very, very long; I am interested in what science CAN tell us about Terri. If we cannot just rip out the whole paragraph, then I suggest we move all of the "autopsy details" down the medical page. -- Pinktulip 12:56, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Folks: We do not really make it clear that the Terri Schiavo story dominated American politics for all of March 2005. I think that the time has come to state that more clearly. Would someone else like to try to make that clear? Preferably in both the lead section and the gov't intervention section as it is a very notable aspect of the story? -- Pinktulip 13:58, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I am afraid that Micheal's choice of an ambigous declaration on Terri's stone that "I Kept My Promise" and his pre-existing adultery (and I mean that in the legal sense, say, in the way the Army decommisions officers for adultery) require us to note that discrepancy clearly. If he wanted to go screw that other women, he could have paid the price and divorced Terri, ceding control to her parents. He could have been more circumspect and left that eternal self-congradulatory comment out, but he chose not to do so. There is a REASON why, even in the strictly legal vows, they say "In sickness and in health". What say you all? Do we note this discrepency or do we not? I say that we do. -- Pinktulip 14:27, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
What is this page: Selected court cases in the Terri Schiavo case ? Note: If it is no longer active, I would still appreciate a few days to review it before it gets deleted. -- Pinktulip 15:20, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Since the terms vandal, rapist, terrorist, plagiarizer, "blocked user" and abuser do not seem to stick, now I am "hijacker" because I moved Terri's smiling face down into the "early life" section (which, it seems to me, is where it belongs). Now, ya look at NNDB and they have pretty limited format and attention span. They do not do longitudinal studies like Wikiepdia can and they only they only do the one photo in the upper right-hand corner. We have much better technology than they do. We have sections. Terri's beautiful, smiling slender photo is pre-1990 and that is the section that it belongs in. I say it goes there. What say you all? -- Pinktulip 23:37, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
The current version is fine and matches the standard Wikipedia formatting. -- Davril2020 23:39, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
"Everything is fine and try not to think very much". -- Pinktulip 00:30, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
I must be one heck of a slow hijacker. Tortise-like. Pathetic. History is like that: It requires an attention span of more than your average 60-second TV commercial (which is about how long it takes to revert almost anything in Wikipedia). -- Pinktulip 00:52, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Where the heck do you wantit to go? Bottom of the page? Not the "standard format", but it works for me, for now. -- Pinktulip 23:55, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I added U.S. House elections, 2006 to the Category:Terri Schiavo and User:Marskell removed it. Terri Schiavo is an excellent tool for studing the candidates, but User:Marskell, who is a Canadian, would prefer that we U.S. citizens vote in ignorance. I am adding the category back in and I expect the admins to intervene and stop this crazy man if he continues to destroy my work. I note that, while a Canadian citizen, he prefers to live in country that does not know Democracy. Perhaps his time over there has effected his judgement in some adverse way. Ann: You have recently realized the benefits a serious Wikibreak. Perhaps you could encourage the information-destroying and ignorance-expanding Marskell (à al Karl Popper) to take a long one and realize its healing properties.
I note that he also reverted the memorial section, adding back the Protestant-heretic word "sermon" when the newspapar article clearly indicated that it was a Homily. What is wrong with this man? Is he spending too much time with those heathens in the UAE or something? The word in the newpaper article, which is the cited source, is HOMILY. H-O-M-I-L-Y. Get it? Maybe patsw can help you to look it up in the dictionary, but in MY last version of that section, it was there and it was wikified. Marskell: you have a performed a disservice to the reader of the article by your destructive act.
You know, had you done the WORK of EDITING the material, I might understand, but your style is the STUPID STUPID STUPID: approach of just reverting, no matter how many edits it took me to get it right, and no matter how hard I tried to get you involved in the process, with dialog. I bet that even you would have left the word "homily" in, if you had noticed it, but rather than take the constructive and intelligent approach (which is WORK) you just hit the reset button and somehow expect us all to applaud you for that.
AND you broke the wiki-link to Father Frank Pavone! -- Pinktulip 14:42, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Whew! Now that I have expressed myself, I know that as a man of honor, you will put my work back the way it was and, if you want to rip out the picture, that works for me, but Terri is stuck with the words that Michael saddled her with forever, both at the graveyard and here at Wikipedia. I do not really like the picture, but my version of the easy-to-read words stay with Terri forever, just like in the graveyard. She has no escape from them, so stop trying to obscure them. Trying to obscure them is a destructive act, as if you went to the graveyard and tried to smash out the letters with a sledgehammer. We all recognize that obscuring the words is a loss of Information and is evil. -- Pinktulip 16:21, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Buddy: Take it over to THAT article's talk page. Until you get youself over to the correct discussion page, it goes back in. -- Pinktulip 00:15, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Now perhaps you see that utility of Terri Schiavo is as Rorschach Test. You dangle that pretty, slender alive and aware young face in front of the Power Players (on both the Left and the Right) and you see how they respond. If they respond inappropriately, then you make a note it, as if they were just some rat in your laboratory. That is what make Wikiepda so powerful. And it is all true and NPOV; notable and fair. No need to go after little old ladies or TV commentors. Just the men and women of power, pretige and responsibility. They are ones who can really screw things up. -- Pinktulip 00:06, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
I added U.S. House elections, 2006 to the Category:Terri Schiavo and User:Marskell removed it. Terri Schiavo is an excellent tool for studing the candidates, but User:Marskell, who is a Canadian, would prefer that we U.S. citizens vote in ignorance. I am adding the category back in and I expect the admins to intervene and stop this crazy man if he continues to destroy my work. I note that, while a Canadian citizen, he prefers to live in country that does not know Democracy. Perhaps his time over there has effected his judgement in some adverse way. Ann: You have recently realized the benefits a serious Wikibreak. Perhaps you could encourage the information-destroying and ignorance-expanding Marskell (à al Karl Popper) to take a long one and realize its healing properties. -- Pinktulip 14:42, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Read 'em weep User:Marskell . Category:Terri Schiavo minor players . There is no way on God's green Earth that you will succeed in convincing anyone that the minor players in the Terri Schavio story are not "notable" when taken in aggregate. Have a nice day.
Come hither Marskell! Your ridiculous hair-splitting was anticipated. Admit defeat in your attempts to hide this information, pulling strings on the Admin notice board, and controlling our view of the information from your desert fortress. Come back to Democracy. Sweet Liberty and Freedom beckon to you! -- Pinktulip 01:01, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
This talk page is becoming much too confrontational for my liking. I have other articles I'm interested, plus lots of real life commitments, so for the moment, I'm not even going to try to study all the recent comments. A few points:
AnnH (talk) 01:39, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
No big jump in logic, really. But his words are not exactly
That is reading a bit much into it. And rather far from
No, that is right out. You see what I mean about exactly the words he said? They really do not mean a heck of a lot. He had been, on and off, helping to clean her bedpan for almost a half a decade at that point. I am sure that the routine was getting kind of old. He is only human. He DEFINTELY has his flaws. Ann: please do as you see fit (but you do not have time, so that means that we do nothing about it). The critical, well-educated reader will recognize the irrelevance of this information, but I am not sure how many of those Wikiepdia attracts, so I am not willing to fight about it.
Mention what you want to about Michael, but remember: Our space in this article is limited (I feel like the ghost of Christmas Present à la Dickens, but I digress). Choose what you want in the article with care. When your lawyer argues you case in court, he picks the topics to talk about with care in that adverserial process, because the judge will eventually cut him off if he goes over his allotted time. Fortunately, despite the manipulative grandstanding, the venial and very stinky intrigues and the sneaky vicious backstabbing, especially by those heretics, and in particular those Lutheran heretics who started it all almost 500 years ago (steady pinky, steady...), we are in a cooperative process here. That process is one of mutual love, honor and respect.
Rule of thumb: This article should be no more than 40KB. Some detalis must be delegate further. No more food analogies about sanwhich with or without meat and I will leave the irresistable snipes about vegatables out also.
Do not destroy information! Just organize it better and in a manner that is easier to browse and even skip around in. This article was so LINEAR even only a month ago. It was like Mass: you start at the beginning and you grind through it to the end. No skipping around. This is NOT Mass. We have other options. If the reader wants to skim, then help to skim! Do not bog them down. Frame discrete informational components like court cases. Ignore Barbara Tuchman's advice about these seemingly-endless appeals. Give the verdict up front. We do now. It helps.
When a lawyer reads a non-jury judgement handed down, do you think s/he starts at the beginning and reads it through? Or course not! S/he skips straight to the ruling to see if they won or if they lost, or something in between if it is complex. The lawyers knows the traditional format of the judgment from years of experience and knows straight where to go. THEN they read it from start to finish. Our readers are less sophisticated and we are making up our layout as we go. Make it easy for the reader to be, to the extent possible, as efficient as a professional. Again: If they want to skim, help them!
Again, about that 40KB smallness goal, most notably, in my recent gathering of information:
We know it is "better" now, but there is still room for improvement.
Deal with it. Please. For Terri. For history. For TRVTH! All of it.
You take high road and I'll take the low road... Oh wait. That is Scotland. Anyway: I had better shut up for now and get back to work. -- Pinktulip 03:06, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
And I will leave that irrelevant photo of her where it lies: at the top of the page. I PARTICULARLY resent that that nigger-word-loving real-nigger-hating (a Linguistic object/reference duality that Ann is particular well-prepared to discern and appreciate), incomptent and lying Mark Furman uses it on the cover of his book by which he currently makes his filthy money (because he is morally unfit to earn his living as a policeman or have any manner of elevated civil authority whatsoever) off of Terri's tragedy, but I will leave it there. That is, until that piece-of-crap "good article" mark arrives on this talk page. Then we talk about it some more. -- Pinktulip 03:15, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
If you have trouble following my train of thought, then I refer you to this page: William Chester Minor. My penis is still attached and performing all of the functions that Nature intended it to, thank you very much. But my mind... well... you get the idea... -- Pinktulip 03:22, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
I want every to note that Marskell, the reverter of my work on the Terri Schiavo page and the Terri Schiavo Cateory (or articles thereof) is now also reverting my words on the Terri Schiavo talk page. He would rather that you see only his selected version of my words rather than the final product of my efforts. I am sure that that style worked very well for him when he tossed me up on WP:AN as well. He snideness about the "good article" mark the I helped to get for the Challenger Space Shuttle page suddenly disappeared into smooth-talking, politeness, with the obivous implication of "We are all just victims of the nasty Pinktulip". "No need to talk to Pinktulip when he does not merit that level of fairness." Just dislike him and undo his work. How genuine of Marskell. -- Pinktulip 09:11, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
I do not often do this looking at other people's contributions, but take a quick look at User talk:Android79 for Marskell's very narrow focus on individual words I wrote, with no context to see if he can get some admin to push the "block" button on me. -- Pinktulip 09:16, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
I do not normally do this looking at other people's contributions (because I can hear the cries of "stalker!" already), but take a quick look at User talk:Android79 for Marskell's very narrow focus on individual words and phrases I wrote, with no context to see if he can get some admin to whack me in some way. You know that this is just an vicious cycle of frustration caused by that guy. You know that reverter attitude, if not by Marskell, then by others of his ilk, is why this article FAILED to become a featured article.
I would like to work on the Terri Schiavo article without being reverted by that guy just as soon as he finds out about my new work. Have I reverted any of his work? No, partially because he has not done that much new and creative work. He just sits there and reverts and hauls in mediation (for mediation sessions that Marskell himself does not have to be involved in) or the admins, one by one. Instead, we are just going around again (but because you are dealing with a mature man, it is all happening on the talk page). We are not having a revert war on the article because I have some respect for it and because I am not in a hurry. I have already had hours of my work reverted in seconds my Maskell. I am willing to work this out, but he is deliberately avoiding talking about the article content. His only interaction with me is his running around, trying to get me in trouble, over and over and over again. -- Pinktulip 09:16, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Pinktulip, I moved your sentence on Michael Schiavo's remarriage to the 'Memorial' section, as one line isn't really worth a whole new header (and one line is all we would need on this). I also renamed the section 'Following death', as the section isn't about solely the memorial (and wasn't even before I moved the Michael Schiavo line).
Suggestion (this to all) - how about moving all the 'Advocacy and commentary' to the Public opinion and activism in the Terri Schiavo case article? It'd get rid of a good 5k off the article, and it's all public opinion stuff anyway? Nothing would be deleted or expunged, just moved to a more suited location. I'll make the change in a day or two, but thought I'd throw it up here first, to see if anyone thinks this would be silly. Proto|| type 09:43, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Tim Marskell chose to re-insert those heretic-words into the article about the Roman Catholic Mass. He had his chance to show that he was an honorable man. As we descend into dishonorable behavior, inevitably, the tactics will become a bit more loathsome. -- 68.122.117.175 11:34, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
We are now going to completely re-work the lead section.
The failed Feature Article attempt verifies that the lead section sucks. What the lead section fails to do is identify the Importance of this dead female. We fail to convey the the end of 2003 and March 2005 as big events. Factions formed. Money flowed. Politics. American Politics. The lead section must give the broad scope and do so tersely. Yes, there are subpages, but this the captone. The executive plan.
Try this on for size: The court rulings were uniform: TS's parents (TSP) were wrong and Michael was right. TS's parent's efforts merely delayed the inevitable. Much like the South in the American Civil War, TS's parents merely fought a Lost Cause. They simply spend a bunch of money, and had a lot of publicity that stretched out over seven years.
When you put it in perspective, it loses some glamour! No pretty young face. No propaganda. All that stupid fighting within Wikipedia: you just forget about it.
I have presented my case that the pretty photo does NOT belong in the lead section. It goes to the "early life" where it belongs. She was NOT notable when she had that pretty face. The pretty face is merely a lie proprigated the TSP. That pretty woman was gone forever. If we put any such photo into the lead section, it will be the REAL photo. Brain-dead Terri in bed. Drooling. Snot running out of nose. Full bedpan. THAT is what the judge had to make a deicision. We need THAT view in order to understand what the judges faced. Otherwise we are simply re-trying the case in the press! That is not how it works.
If people have trouble seeing Terri's Soul in that drooling, shitting person, then that is their problem. That is simply their inabiilty to face the reality of this woman. Some superficial you people may not like that. Tough.
And the courts are just going to be the same old monotonous story: Delay by TSP via appeal and then loss incurred by TSP.
The Florida legislature and the U.S. Congress actions get mentions in the lead section. THAT was why this story ever mattered at all. Whever this female was is just a pile of ashes now. TS WAS notable.
We need a quick statement about the left and right involved. There are a LOT more right-wingers, a lot more right-wing money and a lot more right-wing propaganda involved. There was some leftist activities, but not nearly as much. It is all that right-wing power and money that is going to emerge when Abortion comes around again as the other life/death issue.
We have tried several times to get feedback. Negotiation. Comprosmise. This bullshit about maintaining the status quo on this crappy article with its crappy lead section is over. It does not matter how intricate the footnotes are or how perfect the syntax is if the reader has to slog through it and get no help in recognizing the historical context.
The historical context is these right-wing events:
If they win next, maybe on abortion, I can accept that. If the right loses, I can accept that too, but I do not really care very much.
This bullshit about she-said-the-he-said-that blah blah is BULLSHIT! The nurses affidavit barely merits a mention because the judge dismissed it, pratically out-of-hand.
This bullshit about Canadians and British pro-lifers coming and stroking the hysteria about this fairly-easy-to-write aritcle will END.
If that Canadian Elnglish major Marskell, who did no research, should KEEP OUT! He had his chance to strut his ownership arrogant reverting attitude all over this article for months and his turn is over. -- 68.122.117.175 16:24, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Dialog is possible. My email is amorrow@earthlink.net
So little Pinky became the Obi-wan Kenobe ghosty now. What did he tell dear old Darth Vader? Oh yes:
Do you all see what is happening in the change now. It is no longer about Terri. Even the admins are so despirate to GET Andrew, that they are breaking AnnH's precious highly Linguistically correct footnotes just for the put-down value of reverting Andrew's work. It is just lik Tom and Jerry cartoons where Tom the cat tries to swat Jerry the mouse and breaks the window instead. Like a fly on the vase that you try to swat and... oops! Only too late do you recognize that you have forgotten about the complex hierarchy of your true priorities.
I note also that Mitchel Park Library, branch of Palo Alto Public Library system uses the IP address of 199.33.32.40, which does not itself have a reverse DNS name, but it becomes clear anyway from
gatekeeper.city.palo-alto.ca.us 199.33.32.1
Thank you so much Mr. Bacchus. I admire your purity.
20:14, 9 February 2006, GTBacchus (Talk) blocked 199.33.32.40 (contribs) (infinite) (IP of blocked User:Pinktulip)
-- 68.121.101.234 16:28, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
I know it is going to take a few iterations for the rest of you admins to see that I am merely trying to fix a footnote. I am not desperate to fix this thing. If it takes 100 tries over the next several months, fine. I am not trying to "win", I just want to fix the footnote. I expect that I will be going through admins before they all see that, on such a trivial point, they are on the wrong side of the argument, partially because I have successfully manipulated into that ridiculous position. The sermon->homily word in the text change can occur later. -- 69.228.190.230 23:07, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Of the hundreds on my watchlist this article is like the never ending edit. Of this I'm sure, this article has become a cause and darn if I'll let a "so" where there should be a "but". If this article with its minutia is your cause well then have at it with all of your attention. It at least keeps you away from the rest of this project. hydnjo talk 03:56, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Happy Holidays, everyone. It occured to me that in coming months, media attention will once again focus on this subject. *shudders* Wikipedia, and this article, have been called the best, most balanced sources of information on Terri and the tragedy that surrounded her. But, we all know we can do better. Let's do this:
To achieve this, we must work together. Some things I'd like to see:
What are your thoughts?-- ghost 17:57, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
"Dr. Stephen J. Nelson, P.A., cautioned that "[n]europathologic examination alone of the decedent’s brain – or any brain for that matter – cannot prove or disprove a diagnosis of persistent vegetative state or minimally conscious state."
This is puzzling to me. If a corpse were autopsied and zero brain matter was found - ie., the cranium was completely empty, not that this is likely to ever happen - would that not be enough evidence of "minimal consciousness"? Surely so. And finding an undamaged brain would seem to at least give a firm indication for healthy brain function. So surely there is some dividing line between intact and vanished, which could be an indicator for or against the presence of PVS during life; remove neurons one by one and eventually, PVS will occur, doubtless before the skull is entirely empty; yet what remains can be called a "brain". Is Dr. Nelson saying that medical knowledge has not yet discovered where that line lies, or that there is still controversy over where it lies? Is it impossible to simply state a ballpark probability of minimal brain function based on neuronal damage? It certainly seems plausible, even if science hasn't reached that point yet. Therefore his blanket statement, when he says "any brain" cannot yield the information required for diagnosis, seems ridiculous and overly general. Thoughts? - Kasreyn 08:53, 25 December 2005 (UTC).
First of all, it's what he said. We report what he said, not whether we feel it works. Second, he said it because, as he made clear, both PVS and MCS are clinical diagnoses, whose pathological basis has not been agreed, so his findings cannot be taken to support either. Ronabop is spot on, I think. He's not saying knowing knows where the line is. He's saying no one has established there is a line. Grace Note 04:59, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
Where is the source that he was the Schindler's family doctor? I have a blog mentioning him as their family friend which does not seem reliable. Radiologists do not function as family doctors. -- DocJohnny 12:39, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
edits removed by originator
Actually, it's not a Neruda poem. All round the net you can find people thinking that it is, but it doesn't seem that it is. If anyone knows who did write it, please give me a message or an email. Grace Note 03:01, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
edits removed by originator
Anon user 24.194.166.146 removed the following link from the Advocacy and Commentary section:
And added the following links:
Can we please review these and see if the link are/aren't appropriate?-- ghost 15:24, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Someone sent me the following note: Hello 84.148.98.22, (that was ROHA) and welcome to Wikipedia!... (Welcome Template) Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes ( 84.148.79.1 07:57, 12 January 2006 (UTC)); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you have any questions, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! --Hurricane111 05:33, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
And I answered to this someone (while it talks about the innocent boxer HURRICANE, it has only to do with the innocent Terri Schiavo and the US jurisdictation:)
Do you remember the HURRICANE, the boxer, who was once sentenced to death, while he was completely innocent ? Bob Dylan visited this boxer within his prison cell. Dylan talked with Hurricane. When he left the prison, he wrote the song "Hurricane". This song he published in his album "Desire". Soon after, other people found that the boxer "Hurricane" could not have commited the murder by any chance. Some intelligent people found out, that "Hurricane" could not have, by logic, been the murderer. So they decided: "Hurricane" is not guilty of the murder. So this man was released after a too long time from an American prison. But finally he was a free man. He was not freed because there was a Wikipedia, no. He was freed because there was only one intelligent man who found out and believed that "Hurricane" was completely innocent. Now you may guess the name of this man. (Please publish this my text and your answer to the relevant Wiki discussion pages. Thanks for that.) Hans Rosenthal (ROHA) (hans.rosenthal AT t-online.de -- replace AT by @ ) (1201200) PS: Not that someone gets me wrong: It was certainly the right decision to let Terri go away in a painless way, but it was not the right way to let her husband suffer to help his wife to leave him in such a merciful way.
I'm new, so I don't know how to go about filing a complaint on this.
But it appears that user 209.173.6.202 is going around defacing entries. For example, saying Terri Schiavo deserved to die and that someone else's childhood was miserable after he found out his father was gay, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by NiftyDude ( talk • contribs) 18:52, 17 January 2006
This story is long and complicated enough that the lead paragraph really should only say one thing: Why this story is important. No hair-splitting about all the medical details; just the big, obvious pieces for the person who has never heard of this story before. Terri Schaivo is not notable because she lived and died; she is notable because of the legal and political struggle that occurred around her. -- Pinktulip 07:52, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
ML has reverted the intro back and I was partly waiting for her and others' input before doing the change myself. I don't believe radical surgery is required. Most precisely, "The lead should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article in such a way that it could stand on its own as a concise version of the article" ( WP:LEAD). The lead as it stood at the beginning of the day (and stands now) more or less agrees with this. It is rather lengthy but this is as appropriate as the length of lead should correspond to the length of the article. And note that Pink's lead actually increased article size, which we don't need. Marskell 14:30, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
At the top level:
Look at the paragraph now. Low on details? Yes. Just the high-level concepts to answer the question: "What happened? Why does it matter?". Look at the brief version. Every sentance is essential. That is part of what is ment by brilliant prose. Is that not the goal? -- Pinktulip 22:42, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
I have been reverted twice. I give up. You guys want to obsess about your favorite details or blindly defend the status quo. It is small wonder that this never made it to FA. -- Pinktulip 23:13, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
"...whose medical and family circumstances and attendant legal battles fueled intense media attention and led to several high-profile court decisions and involvement by prominent politicians and interest groups."
The reader's eyes glaze over as they realize that the group that wrote this cannot write simple, clear, direct NPOV sentances about just the very biggest chuncks of the story because they, as a consensus group, are obsessed about not offending this or that sub-group.
What is it trying to say? "The story got a lot of publicity." Is that REALLY why the story is so important? I do not think so. That kind of thing happens whenever ANYTHING gets a lot of publicity.
I encourage you to look at the lead paragraphs (which I worked on and which have been slighly diluted since then) in:
The lead paragrphas get to the point of how the crews were killed and mentions the impact to Space program. That is what was historically Important. You could easily drown either of those lead paragraphs with engineering details or other facts, but it would be disservice to the reader. -- Pinktulip 02:35, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
It is almost as if the police arrived at my door, sat me down, spent five minutes going over some police report and then finally tell me that my mother is dead (actually, my mother is still alive). But because they are police, they go through some process and then finally tell me what is Important. Of course, police do not really do that either, but that is what the current lead section reads like. It should be half the size that it currently is. -- Pinktulip 05:45, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
OK, since you guys will not accept an executive plan about the historical importance of TS, the challenge is just to find the next big piece of the current oversized article that can be broken out into its own article. Any suggestions? -- Pinktulip 00:06, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Now I see what the problem is: You people think that this is that "Terri Schiavo medical data" article. That is one of the reasons why this article is so hopeless not "FA" quality. I am aware that some judicial decisions might have been based on some medical details, but it is the medical info that is bulky. We can also have a TS "fourteen appeals" article, if you like. Were any of you even aware that that there is a TS timeline article (for which I addded a ref to a "See Also" section)? Any objections to starting a TS "medical data" article and moving most of the bulky medical info there? -- Pinktulip 00:55, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Do you not get it? What happened Politically is more Important that what happened in the Courts (except when it negated the politics), and what happened in the Courts is more Important than what happened in the Hospital. And that is not always true, but it is true in this case. I still say you guys just want to re-fight the Court battles. That approach will consume your writing space (and the reader's patience) faster than almost any other. -- Pinktulip 21:35, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
I want you all to go look at
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Terri_Schiavo
Look at the difference in emphasis. It is not exactly our style, but uses the same technology as we do. Learn from it. -- Pinktulip 07:30, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
What a beautiful decision: The super-long list of external links are on a separate page:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Terri_Schiavo:_External_Links
but you guys are using internal references, so that huge gob of data has to stay on this page.
BTW: I am not accusing you guys of http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Marketing_Terri_Schiavo -- Pinktulip 09:18, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
I do not mean that as an insult to any one of you, but as an ensemble, you represent mental illness because of what you are doing with this page. Here is what you are doing: You are re-fighting the court battles and DROWNING this story in details. You really need to delegate all the legal stuff to a separate page (or multiple pages, if it bloats like that). Just my trying to fight the link rot this page is painful because there are too many references. Wikipedia technology breaks down after about 20 references and it becomes hard to use. You have 70. No wonder the quality and readability of the article is so low. -- Pinktulip 11:29, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Another example of brillaitn prose:
This lead paragraph was nice short:
But that is not good enough, because the Bee Gees were also Great (in the pop musical world). Some people say that they were greater than the Beetles. Why? How do you say it in as few words as possible? I put it my way with this additional text:
In case you do not recall: two years ago, Maurice died suddenly. I point this out because that means that, to hear tha sound again, you will to listen to their recorded music. I am not promoting the Bee Gees. I am simply answering the question: "Why were they Great?"
Brilliant prose is about demonstrating in as few words as possible that you know exactly why what you are writing about is Important. The Bee Gees were Important because of their Sound. Notice I do not use the word "trio"? It is because some of you pathetic fault-finders will tut-tut me and point out that, for a few early years, they were a quinitet, so I just give up on that word pre-emptively. I still want get some brilliant prose into the TS article, especially the lead section.
I am still looking for the most terse, elegant and appropriate way to indicate that they wrote a lot of their own songs and they stood physically close together in their live concerts. It is not because I like them (well, their music is infectious and nice), it is because that also was part of their Success.
When I wrote "I give up" above, I ment it. I am not going to edit the text mich anymore and I am not going to propose my stuff again in order to run through some gauntlet of reverters. I am going to browbeat you people into doing the right thing. My job is point out why the current article sucks. I have no problem with consensus building, but what you guys have created through your consensus building is too fluffy. You should pare it down and de-crapify it. -- Pinktulip 00:54, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
I will just keep on waving the lead section of http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Terri_Schiavo in your faces as it gets better and better. And do you notice how low-data the opening of 9/11 is now? And the Shuttles? There is a very god reason for that: these stories are complicated. Very long and complicated. A good lead section will drive the rest of the article by declaring what is Important enough to spend more space on in this article. When the time comes to getting this article back down to 30 kilobytes or so (probably by breaking more stuff out into other pages), a good lead section will make the choices easier. See how that SourceWatch lead section evolves? Just bold, broad assertions that capture the essense of the story and just the big chuncks. No footnotes. Just the major players, the major movements, the decisive turning points and the historical context. Those other details, if they survive at all, can go in the LATER sections. -- Pinktulip 07:13, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
BTW: You see how that "See also" section I created is growing? Did any of you know about the TS timeline article? And look at Tirhas Habtegiris. Mr. Big Fish himself, was busy signing death warrants for hospital patients while back in Texas. Very interesting. -- Pinktulip 01:35, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Why does the article have font=75% footnotes? What WP styleguide is suggesting this? patsw 03:55, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
"...graduated from Archbishop Wood Catholic High School, a private school in nearby Warminster Township, Pennsylvania." The high school is already hyperlinked. It is a Catholic school, so I already know that it is a private school (BTW: I went to Catholic grade and high school). If I really want to know exactly where TS's high school was, I can click on the link. You wanna include TS's brother and siser's names? Fine (they are not notable, but I am unwilling to fight about it), but please do not adorn the hyperlinks with unnecessary verbiage. -- Pinktulip 05:24, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
We need to delegate some of the information to a subpage. How about this? We take everything from
to
and we put it in a subpage. We can call it "TS medical situation" or something like that. Refer to it in a section of a similar name and breifly summarize what the Courts would conclude based on that information. Even if this article is never makes FA, it will make the article better. BTW: I realize that the medical and court stuff is intertwined, but it can be quickly summarized. -- Pinktulip 23:35, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
BTW: I noticed on the TS timeline article that Michael married his girlfriend yesterday. Not quite quite notalbe/newsworthy enough to make the front page of any newspaper, but it is nice that we have a "timeline" subpage where tidbits like that can be added w/o being intrusive. -- Pinktulip 00:14, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
I have not heard objections in over 24 hours to the proposed subpage... -- Pinktulip 05:28, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
OK, I finally got to this. Since this is a branch, people should hold off making further changes or double fix any changes they makes, at least until we decide on if we want to commit to this delegation.
I have copied the "Initial medical crisis" as the intro to the subpage. It main article is still over 50 KB long. I still think we should conduct of "battle of the bulge" until we are down to 30 KB, but I certainly do not insist. Perhaps we could also move "Oral feeding II" and "Autopsy" down there as well? We could also just go for yet another subpage: a "Terri Schiavo external links" page. That would help on a size a little (another 7KB). I would like some feedback on this. -- Pinktulip 11:31, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
I propose to standardize the font size of the text of the article to conform to the Wikipedia style and guidelines by removing the size=75% on the Notes and References section. Personally, I have to reset my browsers font size to read them, so I suspect this is a genuine web accessibility problem. What support do you find in the Wikipedia style and guidelines for using size=75%? patsw 04:02, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
In the interests of thrashing out a viable solution to the bloat of the article, Pinktulip has put together a suggested form for a subpage on the medical info associated with Terri Schiavo (link above). There's also a temp version of what the main article would look like. Your thoughts, please! I'm in favour, but the paragraph linking to the medical subpage will need redoing I think. Proto t c 21:18, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Let us keep the process forward-looking: Do we want this to be FA in 2006 or in 2007? If in 2006, then how are we going to get there? I suggest that some structural re-organization is imperative and I have made my specific recommendation. The lack of response tells me that, despite whatever battles have been fought in the past on this (be they in 2005 or back to 2003 or further), the number of soldiers in the armies on each side of the battlefield can now counted one hand. Simply put: most other people have moved on. Surely, those who might now object have been given ample notice and are being given ample time to respond. -- Pinktulip 21:36, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Ann and Pat: I appreciate that input, but let me point that this story now falls in the realm of historical narrative. Look at that SourceWatch article again: except for the lead section, it is just bunch of quotations. It that what we want? I do not think so. Good historical narrative requires that author get the facts straight and then make reasonable assertions within a coherent train of thought. Trying to constantly get some source to tell the story is likely to lose the reader, because the reader can sense that that author does not have enough mastery of the facts to state them clearly and confidently.
As far as I can tell, there are very few issues of fact that are both Important and still in dispute. I do not expect a lot of "he said"/"they said" between Michael and Terri's parents as some kind of dual-presentation within the aritlce text. We benefit from additional information, such as the autopsy, and so we are in a good position to come up with a single narrative.
I appreciate knowing that problematic and POV editors in the past have participated, but NCdave's last Wikipedia contribution was in July 2005. Clearly, he is now on indefinite, and I would guess permanent, Wikivaction. If I add some phrase that is POV (such as "allowed to die" or comatose rather than PVS), please assume that it is a technical error rather than some deep-seated POV and if you would simply reword such phrases (or ask me to do so, if you that that is more efficient) rather than revert all my changes, and please assume that such an action would resolve the disagreement.
On this business of the story being from Michael's POV: I am ill-informed about his public statements except that he did not make many of them relative to TS's parents. I also happen to feel that it was no accident TS's parents chose Randall Terry (please feel free to contribute to that article) as their spokeman. As I emailed to James Jewel recently:
Mr. Jewel responded to me in an email that he had no argument my using his quotations being in the RT article and also in the District of Columbia Civil Contempt Imprisonment Limitation Act. Obviously, he is clearly still on the pro-life side of the argument.
I am mentioning all this in order to point that that TS's parents did get their side of the story out to the public and their side of the story belongs in this article, but ultimately, they did not prevail, neither in the political arena, the courts, nor the hospital. This is not to argue that we surrender to that shallow adage that "History belongs to the winners", but one also has to face facts.
We all know how it turns out, but the story can still be told in a manner that is much more readable that the article in its current state. By "coherent train of thought", I am hoping that we can take a cue from Barbara Tuchman, who advises: Write the historical narrative as if you do not know how it is going to turn out. I am hoping that we can follow the events of 2003 to 2005 pretty much as they happened.
Again, my main goal is to elevate this article above its currently entrenched mediocrity. I refer you to William F. Buckley, Jr. article, and in particular this link in the article [1]. And in particular:
Pinktulip is not here to dispense POV inspiration. I am here to inspire good journalism. I am here to show that this story can be told in an FA-quality manner. All I want is for people who want to know "What happened?" in the Terri Schiavo story to come to this article to get a quick answer that covers most of the important points, fairly and accurately. That is my understanding of what Wikiepdia is for. -- Pinktulip 15:29, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
I am looking for when history seems to repeat itself. I want to point out some of my recent efforts:
I want you see how I have changed (I created the Morgan article under a different account) these articles and how they do form a pair, like a pair of bookends on a shelf. My perspective is legal and political (well, engineering/management in the case of the Shuttles). I want to point out what obvious parallels exist.
In the cases of Schiavo/Morgan, what interests me most are the judicial/political parallels. Both are cases of legislative intervention, which does not happen by accident. In both cases, conservative/religious forces formed the main thrust of that legislative intervention. I am attempting to point out the flaws in each intervention but not to otherwise judge those interventions.
I am saying this to share with you my true perspecitive on Schiavo's case. I want to you see how beautifully Simpson's trial is delegated, without whitewashing (pun intended) him as a person. Ultimately, we, as a society based on laws, have to accept the verdict of his criminal trial. Do you see how the Blake trail is NOT about the Simpson's trail, but about Simpson after his trial?
Again, the Shiavo medical info matters, but it can be framed and summarized. That is why I stress: the medical information is merely input to the judicial and political process. It can be summarized in the main article. -- Pinktulip 09:42, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
In this case, by "chops" I mean "skllls gained via practice" rather than some reference to amputation or burchering. O. J. Simpson and Noam Chomsky articles now have a bright future because of the delegation I have performed on them. Simpson no longer drowns in his trial, and Chomsky no longer drowns in his vast array of politics. Now, it is this article's turn. No meaningful objections have arisen. As you can see, my approach is iterative, so I am going to need several hours with no reversions please. It is going to be like a canine spleenectomy (which I have assisted in the performance of w/o loss of life): there will be a lot of litlte connections that need to get fixed up once the major mass is moved elsewhere. -- Pinktulip 02:41, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
You see how that works? You have shape the bridging paragraphs so that the segue into the following "2003" section that follows. Let me tell you what is going to happen for now: The reader is just going to become exasperated with the lead section and skip over it, hoping that the subsequent sections have a more coherent train of thought. The story has a tempo:
The point of all this is not to dramatize it. It is to make it clear to reader what periods of time were inconclusive and to rapidly proceed to those moments and decisions that were more decisive and thus, more Important when describing in the larger sense both what happened and why things went historicaly in one direction or the other. It is fine to talk about the lesser events that lead up to those decisive moments, but you have to make the cause-and-effect relationship of those lesser events to the decisive moment has to be constructed in a clear fashion. Otherwise, you are just presenting each reader with a pile jumbled facts and forcing them to figure out where those important, decisive moments came from. -- Pinktulip 04:48, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Her mother she could never stand, Sing rickety-tickety-tin, Her mother she could never stand, And so a cyanide soup she planned. The mother died with a spoon in her hand, And her face in a hideous grin, a grin, Her face in a hideous grin.
Part of Leher's comic effect is that he knows exactly what he is talking about. The Ballad is not quite as funny as his Vatican Rag (" Two, four, six, eight! Time to transubstantiate!) because the Ballad is a bit darker. (In the recording I've heard, you can hear those 20-something Catholic school girls out the in audience positively squeal with shock and laughter). The grin is a muscular thing or something. It is funny that Lehrer and Shirley Temple both live nearby me here in Palo Alto and neither of them want to talk about the past entertainment lives much now. Avoiding typecasting or getting on with their quite accomplished serious lives or something like that. Am I going on like like James Joyce now? I guess I am. It's my Irish mother's depressive influence, I guess. She grew up in Newfoundland. Anyway: Is it fair to first inform the viewer about the biological facts (or whatever you want to call such details)? -- Pinktulip 11:15, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Marskell: 1990 to 2003 was "inconclusive". The tube goes in and out and stuff, but nothing decisive happens. By then, Michael and the Schindlers are opponents of each other, but exactly how that happened just a soap opera. Now they are opponents and that is what matters. It is not like some priest or counselor is suddenly going to appear and make them all lovey-dovey now, is it? No, it is not. They are in a life-or-death struggle, and neither is going to back down. If I were making a TV movie, of course the soap opera would get its full ten minutes or whatever, but this is about Terri Schiavo. Her fate lies in the hand's of the courts (which are SO much more dull, dull, dull).
We can set up the context for the 2003 struggle and just take it from there. We already know Micheal wants so, he will remain almost mute for the rest of the story. Really, Terri is the same person with the same Soul in 2003 as she was in 1990/1991. All of the issues are the same. I feel that we still could use some more context in that 1990-2003 section, but the scene is now set. The story is pretty much the Schindler's story from here on in. 2003 is when things get more complicated because that is when more power players get involved and the story branches out into additional and simultaneous threads. That is what the reader will need help in understanding: All of those things and legal and political stuff all going on at the same time. -- Pinktulip 12:23, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
I've changed one place where scenario is used to "events".
The other place it needs to be changed is from "Medical Scenario" to "Medical Background" or something equivalent. patsw 05:02, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Done. -- Pinktulip 05:08, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
I think that the autopsy can go down into the medical subpage. The autopsy in and of itself is not a major event and it generally supports the assessment made in the 2003 bridge paragraphs. I can wait two days while we talk about this move. Feedback? -- Pinktulip 13:56, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
I am trying to highlight the fact that there are two major episodes of gov't intervention. I do not think that have a single "gov't intervention" section is going to work. It is too jarring to have two sections called "Terri's Law". It breaks the chronology. I have marked out the second "Terri's Law" section. The obvious change is to put it into chronological order and maybe just reference the gov't interversion subpage twice. I am going to think about this for a while and allow time for feedback. -- Pinktulip 14:38, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
I have to disagree with you on this one, AnnH. Now, if wikipedia were to state, "Michael Schiavo kept his promise", or "Terri Schiavo departed this earth February 25, 1990", then yes, that would be biased POV and unacceptable, and I would join you in removing it. But wikipedia reporting what the woman's gravestone says, is merely reporting the facts. Michael Schiavo obviously chose to use it as an opportunity to make a final stab in the direction of his critics. Some might see this as moving, and some might see this as petty. How about we let the readers decide? - Kasreyn 07:06, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
I think that it is helpful to reflect on the fact that MIchael authority over Terri was always his to lose. One false move, one moment of abuse, and his authority would have vanished. Once he decided his course in 1994 or 1999, his role in this saga is much like that of the Grim Reaper. Mute. Patient. Waiting for his turn. When everyone else gets out of the way, he swings his scythe without passion and, in ths story he has the final word. He choses to forever distinguish between brain death and biological death in Terri's epitaph. Hate him, love him or indifferent, it is by the retention of his authority that he gets the final word. Either he knew instinctively to mostly keep to keep his mouth shut or he had some good advice. -- Pinktulip 15:04, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
The "bitch" line belongs on Michael's article. They are just words. You want to get into Michael's head? You go to his page and take the measure of the man there. You get to talk about what he did to Terri on Terri's page, but that is it. I will wait for feedback before removing the "bitch" line again. -- Pinktulip 17:52, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't understand. This passage was about what Mrs Iyer said. This is part of what she said (actually I have just discovered the weasel word in there), so why remove it from this passage? Str1977 17:59, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
patsw removed the link to:
http://www.nndb.com/people/435/000026357/
I find that NNDB is not perfect, and at times are quite snide, but the information is usually pretty good. Their page certainly makes a large number of assertions of fact on the page. They cannot all be wrong. They jump to conclusions a few times. I would hope that patsw would take the time to notify them and us about their specific inaccurracies. Wholesale deleting of stuff as "inaccurate" is so easy with this wiki technology. Provinding accurate (or at least fair) information; now that is work.
Oh..... Is it the Ka-deficiency causing-the-heart-attack thing? I am still looking, but I noticed that http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/infopage.html says:
Did the court jump to conclusions also? What authoritative body refuted this finding?
I also noticed that this precious artifact:
which suggests that there was a pre-concieved notion that no heart attack (and therefore, not-so-much brain damage) occurred. But that theory seemed to have taken as much damage to its credibility as the "Nobel prize-winning" Dr. Hammesfahr's reputation has. And how come we do not refer to Dr. Michael Baden? That web page does and we have an article on him. Perhaps it is time to stitch him back into the story. As you can tell from the Elizabeth Morgan article, I am a big fan of using's Wikipedia's special powers to drag all the power players back in, especially if they have Wikipedia articles (and, if necessary, making new articles for them if they are notable enough).
I am going to move this down the "medical background" page, where is belongs. Really, the only question here is: Do we put the NNDB back in? I say we do. -- Pinktulip 20:59, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Check this out:
http://www.miami.edu/ethics/schiavo/1-24-01_DCA%20Opinion.pdf
District Court of Appeal, 2nd District Opinion filed January 24, 2001.
and that is pretty much how the Wikiepdia article is going read, unless someone has later and more authoritative information (and I do not mean some TV show). No need to link it to some bulemia thingy. Any objections? -- Pinktulip 21:50, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
You should explain a little more about what you mean by "lopsided". The "medical background" article is where we examine the medical stuff and we provide the conclusions, if any, in this article. If we need to, we can presentt the "he said"/"they said" dualities briefly if the courts did not make a finding. Both sides had plenty of money and time and competent attorneys and appeals. Yeah, people are sometimes wrongly convicted or wrongly exonerated, but this one is a clear case of the courts, for those matters that they addressed, as being the finder of fact. Who disagrees that we must defer to the findings of the courts in this case? -- Pinktulip 01:17, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure there's vandalism on this page, but I'm not in a position to go through and fix it all up because it's scattered throughout the edit history. Can someone do this please? - Richardcavell 05:27, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Richardcavell: Wow. You catch on quickly! You have made an astute observation in the article (one that I was going to make, but was not yet in the mood to). You correctly point out that the autopsy cannot demonstrate something about an electrolyte imbalance that might have happened 15 years earlier. I already ripped out (00:34, 6 February 2006) our inappropriate statement
Now, I am going to suggest that we just remove the entire paragraph and stop wasting the reader's time with all of these negative diagnoses. Personally, I am not very interested in what science cannot tell us about Terri, for I am sure that such a list would be very, very long; I am interested in what science CAN tell us about Terri. If we cannot just rip out the whole paragraph, then I suggest we move all of the "autopsy details" down the medical page. -- Pinktulip 12:56, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Folks: We do not really make it clear that the Terri Schiavo story dominated American politics for all of March 2005. I think that the time has come to state that more clearly. Would someone else like to try to make that clear? Preferably in both the lead section and the gov't intervention section as it is a very notable aspect of the story? -- Pinktulip 13:58, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I am afraid that Micheal's choice of an ambigous declaration on Terri's stone that "I Kept My Promise" and his pre-existing adultery (and I mean that in the legal sense, say, in the way the Army decommisions officers for adultery) require us to note that discrepancy clearly. If he wanted to go screw that other women, he could have paid the price and divorced Terri, ceding control to her parents. He could have been more circumspect and left that eternal self-congradulatory comment out, but he chose not to do so. There is a REASON why, even in the strictly legal vows, they say "In sickness and in health". What say you all? Do we note this discrepency or do we not? I say that we do. -- Pinktulip 14:27, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
What is this page: Selected court cases in the Terri Schiavo case ? Note: If it is no longer active, I would still appreciate a few days to review it before it gets deleted. -- Pinktulip 15:20, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Since the terms vandal, rapist, terrorist, plagiarizer, "blocked user" and abuser do not seem to stick, now I am "hijacker" because I moved Terri's smiling face down into the "early life" section (which, it seems to me, is where it belongs). Now, ya look at NNDB and they have pretty limited format and attention span. They do not do longitudinal studies like Wikiepdia can and they only they only do the one photo in the upper right-hand corner. We have much better technology than they do. We have sections. Terri's beautiful, smiling slender photo is pre-1990 and that is the section that it belongs in. I say it goes there. What say you all? -- Pinktulip 23:37, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
The current version is fine and matches the standard Wikipedia formatting. -- Davril2020 23:39, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
"Everything is fine and try not to think very much". -- Pinktulip 00:30, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
I must be one heck of a slow hijacker. Tortise-like. Pathetic. History is like that: It requires an attention span of more than your average 60-second TV commercial (which is about how long it takes to revert almost anything in Wikipedia). -- Pinktulip 00:52, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Where the heck do you wantit to go? Bottom of the page? Not the "standard format", but it works for me, for now. -- Pinktulip 23:55, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I added U.S. House elections, 2006 to the Category:Terri Schiavo and User:Marskell removed it. Terri Schiavo is an excellent tool for studing the candidates, but User:Marskell, who is a Canadian, would prefer that we U.S. citizens vote in ignorance. I am adding the category back in and I expect the admins to intervene and stop this crazy man if he continues to destroy my work. I note that, while a Canadian citizen, he prefers to live in country that does not know Democracy. Perhaps his time over there has effected his judgement in some adverse way. Ann: You have recently realized the benefits a serious Wikibreak. Perhaps you could encourage the information-destroying and ignorance-expanding Marskell (à al Karl Popper) to take a long one and realize its healing properties.
I note that he also reverted the memorial section, adding back the Protestant-heretic word "sermon" when the newspapar article clearly indicated that it was a Homily. What is wrong with this man? Is he spending too much time with those heathens in the UAE or something? The word in the newpaper article, which is the cited source, is HOMILY. H-O-M-I-L-Y. Get it? Maybe patsw can help you to look it up in the dictionary, but in MY last version of that section, it was there and it was wikified. Marskell: you have a performed a disservice to the reader of the article by your destructive act.
You know, had you done the WORK of EDITING the material, I might understand, but your style is the STUPID STUPID STUPID: approach of just reverting, no matter how many edits it took me to get it right, and no matter how hard I tried to get you involved in the process, with dialog. I bet that even you would have left the word "homily" in, if you had noticed it, but rather than take the constructive and intelligent approach (which is WORK) you just hit the reset button and somehow expect us all to applaud you for that.
AND you broke the wiki-link to Father Frank Pavone! -- Pinktulip 14:42, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Whew! Now that I have expressed myself, I know that as a man of honor, you will put my work back the way it was and, if you want to rip out the picture, that works for me, but Terri is stuck with the words that Michael saddled her with forever, both at the graveyard and here at Wikipedia. I do not really like the picture, but my version of the easy-to-read words stay with Terri forever, just like in the graveyard. She has no escape from them, so stop trying to obscure them. Trying to obscure them is a destructive act, as if you went to the graveyard and tried to smash out the letters with a sledgehammer. We all recognize that obscuring the words is a loss of Information and is evil. -- Pinktulip 16:21, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Buddy: Take it over to THAT article's talk page. Until you get youself over to the correct discussion page, it goes back in. -- Pinktulip 00:15, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Now perhaps you see that utility of Terri Schiavo is as Rorschach Test. You dangle that pretty, slender alive and aware young face in front of the Power Players (on both the Left and the Right) and you see how they respond. If they respond inappropriately, then you make a note it, as if they were just some rat in your laboratory. That is what make Wikiepda so powerful. And it is all true and NPOV; notable and fair. No need to go after little old ladies or TV commentors. Just the men and women of power, pretige and responsibility. They are ones who can really screw things up. -- Pinktulip 00:06, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
I added U.S. House elections, 2006 to the Category:Terri Schiavo and User:Marskell removed it. Terri Schiavo is an excellent tool for studing the candidates, but User:Marskell, who is a Canadian, would prefer that we U.S. citizens vote in ignorance. I am adding the category back in and I expect the admins to intervene and stop this crazy man if he continues to destroy my work. I note that, while a Canadian citizen, he prefers to live in country that does not know Democracy. Perhaps his time over there has effected his judgement in some adverse way. Ann: You have recently realized the benefits a serious Wikibreak. Perhaps you could encourage the information-destroying and ignorance-expanding Marskell (à al Karl Popper) to take a long one and realize its healing properties. -- Pinktulip 14:42, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Read 'em weep User:Marskell . Category:Terri Schiavo minor players . There is no way on God's green Earth that you will succeed in convincing anyone that the minor players in the Terri Schavio story are not "notable" when taken in aggregate. Have a nice day.
Come hither Marskell! Your ridiculous hair-splitting was anticipated. Admit defeat in your attempts to hide this information, pulling strings on the Admin notice board, and controlling our view of the information from your desert fortress. Come back to Democracy. Sweet Liberty and Freedom beckon to you! -- Pinktulip 01:01, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
This talk page is becoming much too confrontational for my liking. I have other articles I'm interested, plus lots of real life commitments, so for the moment, I'm not even going to try to study all the recent comments. A few points:
AnnH (talk) 01:39, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
No big jump in logic, really. But his words are not exactly
That is reading a bit much into it. And rather far from
No, that is right out. You see what I mean about exactly the words he said? They really do not mean a heck of a lot. He had been, on and off, helping to clean her bedpan for almost a half a decade at that point. I am sure that the routine was getting kind of old. He is only human. He DEFINTELY has his flaws. Ann: please do as you see fit (but you do not have time, so that means that we do nothing about it). The critical, well-educated reader will recognize the irrelevance of this information, but I am not sure how many of those Wikiepdia attracts, so I am not willing to fight about it.
Mention what you want to about Michael, but remember: Our space in this article is limited (I feel like the ghost of Christmas Present à la Dickens, but I digress). Choose what you want in the article with care. When your lawyer argues you case in court, he picks the topics to talk about with care in that adverserial process, because the judge will eventually cut him off if he goes over his allotted time. Fortunately, despite the manipulative grandstanding, the venial and very stinky intrigues and the sneaky vicious backstabbing, especially by those heretics, and in particular those Lutheran heretics who started it all almost 500 years ago (steady pinky, steady...), we are in a cooperative process here. That process is one of mutual love, honor and respect.
Rule of thumb: This article should be no more than 40KB. Some detalis must be delegate further. No more food analogies about sanwhich with or without meat and I will leave the irresistable snipes about vegatables out also.
Do not destroy information! Just organize it better and in a manner that is easier to browse and even skip around in. This article was so LINEAR even only a month ago. It was like Mass: you start at the beginning and you grind through it to the end. No skipping around. This is NOT Mass. We have other options. If the reader wants to skim, then help to skim! Do not bog them down. Frame discrete informational components like court cases. Ignore Barbara Tuchman's advice about these seemingly-endless appeals. Give the verdict up front. We do now. It helps.
When a lawyer reads a non-jury judgement handed down, do you think s/he starts at the beginning and reads it through? Or course not! S/he skips straight to the ruling to see if they won or if they lost, or something in between if it is complex. The lawyers knows the traditional format of the judgment from years of experience and knows straight where to go. THEN they read it from start to finish. Our readers are less sophisticated and we are making up our layout as we go. Make it easy for the reader to be, to the extent possible, as efficient as a professional. Again: If they want to skim, help them!
Again, about that 40KB smallness goal, most notably, in my recent gathering of information:
We know it is "better" now, but there is still room for improvement.
Deal with it. Please. For Terri. For history. For TRVTH! All of it.
You take high road and I'll take the low road... Oh wait. That is Scotland. Anyway: I had better shut up for now and get back to work. -- Pinktulip 03:06, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
And I will leave that irrelevant photo of her where it lies: at the top of the page. I PARTICULARLY resent that that nigger-word-loving real-nigger-hating (a Linguistic object/reference duality that Ann is particular well-prepared to discern and appreciate), incomptent and lying Mark Furman uses it on the cover of his book by which he currently makes his filthy money (because he is morally unfit to earn his living as a policeman or have any manner of elevated civil authority whatsoever) off of Terri's tragedy, but I will leave it there. That is, until that piece-of-crap "good article" mark arrives on this talk page. Then we talk about it some more. -- Pinktulip 03:15, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
If you have trouble following my train of thought, then I refer you to this page: William Chester Minor. My penis is still attached and performing all of the functions that Nature intended it to, thank you very much. But my mind... well... you get the idea... -- Pinktulip 03:22, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
I want every to note that Marskell, the reverter of my work on the Terri Schiavo page and the Terri Schiavo Cateory (or articles thereof) is now also reverting my words on the Terri Schiavo talk page. He would rather that you see only his selected version of my words rather than the final product of my efforts. I am sure that that style worked very well for him when he tossed me up on WP:AN as well. He snideness about the "good article" mark the I helped to get for the Challenger Space Shuttle page suddenly disappeared into smooth-talking, politeness, with the obivous implication of "We are all just victims of the nasty Pinktulip". "No need to talk to Pinktulip when he does not merit that level of fairness." Just dislike him and undo his work. How genuine of Marskell. -- Pinktulip 09:11, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
I do not often do this looking at other people's contributions, but take a quick look at User talk:Android79 for Marskell's very narrow focus on individual words I wrote, with no context to see if he can get some admin to push the "block" button on me. -- Pinktulip 09:16, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
I do not normally do this looking at other people's contributions (because I can hear the cries of "stalker!" already), but take a quick look at User talk:Android79 for Marskell's very narrow focus on individual words and phrases I wrote, with no context to see if he can get some admin to whack me in some way. You know that this is just an vicious cycle of frustration caused by that guy. You know that reverter attitude, if not by Marskell, then by others of his ilk, is why this article FAILED to become a featured article.
I would like to work on the Terri Schiavo article without being reverted by that guy just as soon as he finds out about my new work. Have I reverted any of his work? No, partially because he has not done that much new and creative work. He just sits there and reverts and hauls in mediation (for mediation sessions that Marskell himself does not have to be involved in) or the admins, one by one. Instead, we are just going around again (but because you are dealing with a mature man, it is all happening on the talk page). We are not having a revert war on the article because I have some respect for it and because I am not in a hurry. I have already had hours of my work reverted in seconds my Maskell. I am willing to work this out, but he is deliberately avoiding talking about the article content. His only interaction with me is his running around, trying to get me in trouble, over and over and over again. -- Pinktulip 09:16, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Pinktulip, I moved your sentence on Michael Schiavo's remarriage to the 'Memorial' section, as one line isn't really worth a whole new header (and one line is all we would need on this). I also renamed the section 'Following death', as the section isn't about solely the memorial (and wasn't even before I moved the Michael Schiavo line).
Suggestion (this to all) - how about moving all the 'Advocacy and commentary' to the Public opinion and activism in the Terri Schiavo case article? It'd get rid of a good 5k off the article, and it's all public opinion stuff anyway? Nothing would be deleted or expunged, just moved to a more suited location. I'll make the change in a day or two, but thought I'd throw it up here first, to see if anyone thinks this would be silly. Proto|| type 09:43, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Tim Marskell chose to re-insert those heretic-words into the article about the Roman Catholic Mass. He had his chance to show that he was an honorable man. As we descend into dishonorable behavior, inevitably, the tactics will become a bit more loathsome. -- 68.122.117.175 11:34, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
We are now going to completely re-work the lead section.
The failed Feature Article attempt verifies that the lead section sucks. What the lead section fails to do is identify the Importance of this dead female. We fail to convey the the end of 2003 and March 2005 as big events. Factions formed. Money flowed. Politics. American Politics. The lead section must give the broad scope and do so tersely. Yes, there are subpages, but this the captone. The executive plan.
Try this on for size: The court rulings were uniform: TS's parents (TSP) were wrong and Michael was right. TS's parent's efforts merely delayed the inevitable. Much like the South in the American Civil War, TS's parents merely fought a Lost Cause. They simply spend a bunch of money, and had a lot of publicity that stretched out over seven years.
When you put it in perspective, it loses some glamour! No pretty young face. No propaganda. All that stupid fighting within Wikipedia: you just forget about it.
I have presented my case that the pretty photo does NOT belong in the lead section. It goes to the "early life" where it belongs. She was NOT notable when she had that pretty face. The pretty face is merely a lie proprigated the TSP. That pretty woman was gone forever. If we put any such photo into the lead section, it will be the REAL photo. Brain-dead Terri in bed. Drooling. Snot running out of nose. Full bedpan. THAT is what the judge had to make a deicision. We need THAT view in order to understand what the judges faced. Otherwise we are simply re-trying the case in the press! That is not how it works.
If people have trouble seeing Terri's Soul in that drooling, shitting person, then that is their problem. That is simply their inabiilty to face the reality of this woman. Some superficial you people may not like that. Tough.
And the courts are just going to be the same old monotonous story: Delay by TSP via appeal and then loss incurred by TSP.
The Florida legislature and the U.S. Congress actions get mentions in the lead section. THAT was why this story ever mattered at all. Whever this female was is just a pile of ashes now. TS WAS notable.
We need a quick statement about the left and right involved. There are a LOT more right-wingers, a lot more right-wing money and a lot more right-wing propaganda involved. There was some leftist activities, but not nearly as much. It is all that right-wing power and money that is going to emerge when Abortion comes around again as the other life/death issue.
We have tried several times to get feedback. Negotiation. Comprosmise. This bullshit about maintaining the status quo on this crappy article with its crappy lead section is over. It does not matter how intricate the footnotes are or how perfect the syntax is if the reader has to slog through it and get no help in recognizing the historical context.
The historical context is these right-wing events:
If they win next, maybe on abortion, I can accept that. If the right loses, I can accept that too, but I do not really care very much.
This bullshit about she-said-the-he-said-that blah blah is BULLSHIT! The nurses affidavit barely merits a mention because the judge dismissed it, pratically out-of-hand.
This bullshit about Canadians and British pro-lifers coming and stroking the hysteria about this fairly-easy-to-write aritcle will END.
If that Canadian Elnglish major Marskell, who did no research, should KEEP OUT! He had his chance to strut his ownership arrogant reverting attitude all over this article for months and his turn is over. -- 68.122.117.175 16:24, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Dialog is possible. My email is amorrow@earthlink.net
So little Pinky became the Obi-wan Kenobe ghosty now. What did he tell dear old Darth Vader? Oh yes:
Do you all see what is happening in the change now. It is no longer about Terri. Even the admins are so despirate to GET Andrew, that they are breaking AnnH's precious highly Linguistically correct footnotes just for the put-down value of reverting Andrew's work. It is just lik Tom and Jerry cartoons where Tom the cat tries to swat Jerry the mouse and breaks the window instead. Like a fly on the vase that you try to swat and... oops! Only too late do you recognize that you have forgotten about the complex hierarchy of your true priorities.
I note also that Mitchel Park Library, branch of Palo Alto Public Library system uses the IP address of 199.33.32.40, which does not itself have a reverse DNS name, but it becomes clear anyway from
gatekeeper.city.palo-alto.ca.us 199.33.32.1
Thank you so much Mr. Bacchus. I admire your purity.
20:14, 9 February 2006, GTBacchus (Talk) blocked 199.33.32.40 (contribs) (infinite) (IP of blocked User:Pinktulip)
-- 68.121.101.234 16:28, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
I know it is going to take a few iterations for the rest of you admins to see that I am merely trying to fix a footnote. I am not desperate to fix this thing. If it takes 100 tries over the next several months, fine. I am not trying to "win", I just want to fix the footnote. I expect that I will be going through admins before they all see that, on such a trivial point, they are on the wrong side of the argument, partially because I have successfully manipulated into that ridiculous position. The sermon->homily word in the text change can occur later. -- 69.228.190.230 23:07, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Of the hundreds on my watchlist this article is like the never ending edit. Of this I'm sure, this article has become a cause and darn if I'll let a "so" where there should be a "but". If this article with its minutia is your cause well then have at it with all of your attention. It at least keeps you away from the rest of this project. hydnjo talk 03:56, 13 February 2006 (UTC)