Talk:Witch trials

Censored passage #1



 * Prior to advent of the President George W. Bush administration, the legalization of torture was unthinkable, as legalized torture was associated with the medieval times of witch trials and confessions forced by instruments of torture that embodied the most abject cruelties. However, following the September 11, 2001 attack by a group of Muslims from from Saudi Arabia on three New York buildings, torture was openly advocated and later implemented, among other places, in the Abu Ghuraib military prison. Torture in Abu Ghuraib included crushing of testicles, burning with cigarettes, beating and choking, setting prisoners on fire, torture by electroshocks, thirst, sleep deprivation, insertions of a gun barrel to prisoner's rectum, and other forms of torture.

The above passage was removed by User:Jayzel68 who justified this removal as


 * removed unreferenced, uncited, highly biased, and historically incorrect pov

I started to number the censored paragraphs, as there are to be likely many more. David Cruise 07:45, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry you feel that your article was censored, but that graf very clearly has no place in an article about a totally unrelated topic. Thank you for your efforts to improve Wikipedia; please consider re-reading WP:NOT.
 * — Adrian~enwiki (talk) 02:03, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Duplication, POV, Reference?
This article's topic is duplicated by Witch trial. Further, this article is almost entirely POV and lacks references. I strongly recommend merging these articles and recommend the Witch trial version. - CNichols 22:48, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

About censorship, burning books, and burning people
This article about witch trials is not only about burning people, but also about the underlying themes of intolerance, censorship, about neverending campaigns to suppress, silence, exterminate.

On Wikipedia, these themes are phrased as duplication, POV, mergers, and name it, accompanied by the red stop signs and other ugly signs that deface the articles. Only seldom are these concerns guided by sincere efforts to improve an article. The majority of these concerns aim to suppress and there is no better way to obliterate than to burn. The abridgements of freedom of expression usually commence with censorship, escalate to prohibitions and lead to burning books and later people. David Cruise 22:18, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc was never charged with witchcraft. The court was actually unable to charge her with witchcraft. The duchess of Bedford, wife to the regent of England who financed the trial, had declared that Joan of Arc was a virgin. Under fifteenth century theology a woman who had intercourse with the devil had intercourse with the devil: therefore a virgin could not be a witch. I've deleted this section. Durova 09:59, 4 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you for calling attention to this factual error. I corrected it and added a note with your explanation. The firm policy on Wikipedia is that before you delete a part of an article, you discuss the proposed deletion. Please look at the corrected version. By deleting the paragraph on Joan of Arc the article was censored and its information value decreased. By adding your comments, the article was edited and its information value increased. David Cruise 13:28, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

And by posting wild charges without references and in-line citations you are committing intellectual fraud, professor. --Jayzel 21:26, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Do you really believe that torture at the Abu Ghuraib did not happen or are you convinced that the pictures of torture on Wikipedia Commons are staged or fabricated? David Cruise 00:03, 5 March 2006 (UTC)


 * That's not the question. You wrote: Prior to advent of the President George W. Bush administration, the legalization of torture was unthinkable, as legalized torture was associated with the medieval times of witch trials and confessions forced by instruments of torture that embodied the most abject cruelties. This is POV and is unreferenced and historically inaccurate. Are you claiming the world was torture-free throughout the 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s? That's a rather bold statement without any source references. And where are your sources backing uo your claim the Bush Administration "legalized" torture? And who associated torture with medieval times? You? Someone else? You offer no source for this claim. As a "professor" we shouldn't have to tell you you are required to back up your claims. --Jayzel 23:53, 5 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm glad you're interested in following Wikipedia policy. Please do so by merging and redirecting this article with Witch trial and by coming into compliance with WP:NPOV and WP:V.  This article is a POV fork, which is strictly disallowed.  If you want it to remain in its present form you should move it to a private website.  Otherwise I will nominate it for deletion.  Regards, Durova 07:55, 5 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what you mean to accomplish with the section below. Wikipedia is a worldwide endeavor so "our founding fathers" etc. is very U.S.-centric.  The heading itself is POV, equivalent to asking, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?"  Wikipedia is an encylcopedia.  Please refer to NPOV, No original research, What Wikipedia is not, and Verifiability.  Contrary to your accusations about censorship and policy, WP:OWN is quite explicit: "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it."  An article about witch trials does not need an entire section devoted to someone who was never charged with witchcraft.  Your user page states that you're a retired academic so I won't patronize you with more details.  Either you're willing to come into compliance with policy or you have some other agenda, in which case I will proceed with standard site procedures. Durova 17:29, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

=Wikipedia at the Crossroads or at the End of the Road?= The classic theory of conflict resolution rests on the dialectic tetrad of thesis, antithesis, synthesis and transcendence. Within this framework, conflicts can be resolved, if the parties involved are using rational arguments. When one or both parties involved in a dispute do not use rational arguments, the conflict cannot be resolved by non-violent means. This was well known to our founding fathers when, to assure the freedom of expression, also mandated the separation of secular and ecclesiastic powers. I wrote this article with the intent to be an experimentum crucis on this point. David Cruise 11:41, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Whatever you believe Wikipedia should be bears no resemblance to what it is. Please familarize yourself with what Wikipedia is not. There are many sites available for thesis, antithesis, and any number of kinds of debate. This isn't one. Note especially:
 * Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought
 * Wikipedia is not a soapbox
 * Wikipedia is not a free host, blog, or webspace provider
 * I'm sure you can find numerous appropriate places to post your theories. Fan1967 04:41, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

=Survey=

Express your opinion whether to keep or to remove this article from Wikipedia.
Or, you could just go to this article's entry on Articles for deletion, which is what will actually decide whether this article gets kept or not. Grandmasterka 06:11, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Please also give your reason why this article should be deleted or retained.
Obviously a lot of revision is necessary as this is a highly biased article, but I'm sure it would be okay once cleaned up some. I think, at the very least, the "artist renderings" need to be removed because they are incredibly childish.