The following page is written entirely by Nema Fakei as a supplement to the evidence presented to the Request for Arbitration concerning the articles surrounding Republic and List of republics. Please comment on the talk page rather than this page.
We are fortunate that this dispute has not been accompanied by a furious edit war on the main namespace; rather, there has been a protracted battle across a number of talk pages. Since users are not in the habit of removing each other's comments, and the evidence happens to have been left relatively unscathed from being archived at this point I would suggest that most of the Arbitration Committee's questions will be answered simply by reading the pages I listed in my Request Statement.
This is largely a statement of my understanding of the situation. It's written a little less carefully than my contribution to the main evidence page, and is not punctuated with diffs. In particular, I abridge a lot of discussion about the book-references in question. I could write an enormous page dissecting each one, but it wouldn't have any bearing on the ArbCom decision.
The first piece of information I feel I should bring is a fuller explanation of the outstanding issues I would like the ArbCom to resolve, along with some of my thinking on the subjects. This, I feel is a context of which the ArbCom may wish to be aware when judging my contributions to the case.
Although the ArbCom does not rule on content disputes, by ruling on principles like consensus, civility and original research, it has demonstrated that it is comfortable making pronouncements on the sort of conduct through which good content can be arrived at, and it is on this that I seek clarification.
I want the Arbitration Committe to encourage editors to restrict ther comments on talk pages to discussion about to the article at hand where at all possible, without bringing in personal disputes or large cross-article wars - if there are issues that affect more than one article, they should be centralised, not cross-posted.
... I agree, but what does this mean? I ask that the Arbitration Committee make some kind of statement on the way that WP:NPOV and WP:LIST interreact with regard to inclusion criteria - or at least clarify for me the best way to develop policy on this issue. Specifically: Do inclusion criteria have to include all members of all possible interpretations of the category that's being listed? This would seem a very odd intepretation of policy, and would mean Butterflies (TV series) belongs in List_of_British_butterflies.
As the inclusion or exclusion of items in a list is making a clear statement of fact about that item (i.e. that it belongs in the list or does not), it seems to me that lists should be clear on what membership does and does not entail, and they should accomplish this by
However, I would add the caveat that they should recognise POV issues by acknowledging when there are other, vaguer definitions that the list does not attempt to cater to.
I ask that the Arbitration Committee to make it clear that the various policies at Wikipedia are neither isolated nor in competition, but are part of a whole. Namely, I ask that ArbCom clarify the position of WP:CONSENSUS with respect to other policies such as WP:V, WP:NPOV, etc., as I'd like to know if I've understood policy correctly when I state that
I understand it is also the Arbitration committee's custom to issue remedies specific to users and situations. I am not (at the time of writing) sure what is the best course of action, but I do have an idea of the issues I feel the ArbCom should be tackling. These are:
As these are clearly not new problems, the remedies need to have some sort of lasting effect. Ideally, they'd also have no adverse implications on the potential for editors to make good contributions.
Secondly, I feel I should make clear my personal view of the issues at hand, and thus the perspective I work from, again, in order that the Arbitration Committee can take these into account where necessary.
Again, I'm not asking for ruling on this (even if ArbCom ruled on content disputes, the actual issue at stake is a fairly trivial one!), I'm just giving some context for ArbCom to refer to so they can follow the debate more easily. WHEELER's case seems to go something like this:
And/or
MY objections go something like this: I agree with his first point (and consider it well-referenced), disagree strongly with his second (and consider it OR), and therefore am unable to support his third. His fourth I believe to be irrelevant, as the word has a range of meanings of which the specific constitutional sense seems the least useful in the contexts in which Cicero uses the phrase. WHEELER's references largely support point one, but, despite what he claims, go no further. He also cites the odd author (Rahe, I believe) who uses republic to refer to Sparta, though again, I suspect they largely use it in the same casual sense as Cicero.
In any case, my stance is that the list criteria alone should define entry to a list, and I'm currently of the opinion that the only workable definition in this case is that of self-definition, as making judgements about the political reality behind individual states is too fraught with POV problems for a list entry to deal with.
The following page is written entirely by Nema Fakei as a supplement to the evidence presented to the Request for Arbitration concerning the articles surrounding Republic and List of republics. Please comment on the talk page rather than this page.
We are fortunate that this dispute has not been accompanied by a furious edit war on the main namespace; rather, there has been a protracted battle across a number of talk pages. Since users are not in the habit of removing each other's comments, and the evidence happens to have been left relatively unscathed from being archived at this point I would suggest that most of the Arbitration Committee's questions will be answered simply by reading the pages I listed in my Request Statement.
This is largely a statement of my understanding of the situation. It's written a little less carefully than my contribution to the main evidence page, and is not punctuated with diffs. In particular, I abridge a lot of discussion about the book-references in question. I could write an enormous page dissecting each one, but it wouldn't have any bearing on the ArbCom decision.
The first piece of information I feel I should bring is a fuller explanation of the outstanding issues I would like the ArbCom to resolve, along with some of my thinking on the subjects. This, I feel is a context of which the ArbCom may wish to be aware when judging my contributions to the case.
Although the ArbCom does not rule on content disputes, by ruling on principles like consensus, civility and original research, it has demonstrated that it is comfortable making pronouncements on the sort of conduct through which good content can be arrived at, and it is on this that I seek clarification.
I want the Arbitration Committe to encourage editors to restrict ther comments on talk pages to discussion about to the article at hand where at all possible, without bringing in personal disputes or large cross-article wars - if there are issues that affect more than one article, they should be centralised, not cross-posted.
... I agree, but what does this mean? I ask that the Arbitration Committee make some kind of statement on the way that WP:NPOV and WP:LIST interreact with regard to inclusion criteria - or at least clarify for me the best way to develop policy on this issue. Specifically: Do inclusion criteria have to include all members of all possible interpretations of the category that's being listed? This would seem a very odd intepretation of policy, and would mean Butterflies (TV series) belongs in List_of_British_butterflies.
As the inclusion or exclusion of items in a list is making a clear statement of fact about that item (i.e. that it belongs in the list or does not), it seems to me that lists should be clear on what membership does and does not entail, and they should accomplish this by
However, I would add the caveat that they should recognise POV issues by acknowledging when there are other, vaguer definitions that the list does not attempt to cater to.
I ask that the Arbitration Committee to make it clear that the various policies at Wikipedia are neither isolated nor in competition, but are part of a whole. Namely, I ask that ArbCom clarify the position of WP:CONSENSUS with respect to other policies such as WP:V, WP:NPOV, etc., as I'd like to know if I've understood policy correctly when I state that
I understand it is also the Arbitration committee's custom to issue remedies specific to users and situations. I am not (at the time of writing) sure what is the best course of action, but I do have an idea of the issues I feel the ArbCom should be tackling. These are:
As these are clearly not new problems, the remedies need to have some sort of lasting effect. Ideally, they'd also have no adverse implications on the potential for editors to make good contributions.
Secondly, I feel I should make clear my personal view of the issues at hand, and thus the perspective I work from, again, in order that the Arbitration Committee can take these into account where necessary.
Again, I'm not asking for ruling on this (even if ArbCom ruled on content disputes, the actual issue at stake is a fairly trivial one!), I'm just giving some context for ArbCom to refer to so they can follow the debate more easily. WHEELER's case seems to go something like this:
And/or
MY objections go something like this: I agree with his first point (and consider it well-referenced), disagree strongly with his second (and consider it OR), and therefore am unable to support his third. His fourth I believe to be irrelevant, as the word has a range of meanings of which the specific constitutional sense seems the least useful in the contexts in which Cicero uses the phrase. WHEELER's references largely support point one, but, despite what he claims, go no further. He also cites the odd author (Rahe, I believe) who uses republic to refer to Sparta, though again, I suspect they largely use it in the same casual sense as Cicero.
In any case, my stance is that the list criteria alone should define entry to a list, and I'm currently of the opinion that the only workable definition in this case is that of self-definition, as making judgements about the political reality behind individual states is too fraught with POV problems for a list entry to deal with.