User:Warshy/Sandbox


 * Oppose. If you want to see the real rationale for trying to promote this article now to FA status you will see it clearly spelled out by the main proponent above here.

More specifically I am referring to the following statement by Tom Reedy:


 * Whether we achieve FA status or no[t - sic!), I don't think any of us knows how much impact this article will have in the future, especially after Emmerich's movie is released in September and people will be searching for an accurate and reliable account of exactly what the Shakespeare authorship question is.

This is the last step of the long struggle (14 months, according to the same proponent in the opening paragraph of the proposition above) of a group of editors' concerted effort to first take control of the page, and then to rewrite it with the specific goal of creating a 'written-in-stone' (i.e., a stable, FA status article) document on Wikipedia. The goal was therefore, from the beginning, to be able to pre-empt any future attempts, after the release of the movie, to review and/or to revise the "official," accepted, mainstream version of the history and status of the SAQ/question.

Now this is obviously a very skillful and talented group of experienced and committed editors ('professional' editors, of the type that are online daily for many, many hours, actively editing for those many hours; as opposed to 'amateurs' such as myself, editors who edit mainly during the weekend and who are constantly struggling with the technology/wiki) that is supported by a considerable number of mainstream administrators inside Wikipedia, as one can readily see by reviewing the development of the recent ArbCom case on the controversy regarding the same page/subject/article here. They are all identified with one side of the SAQ controversy, the so-called "Statfordian" side.

This group of committed "Statfordian" editors have managed in the process to take control and complete ownership of the page; and they have also managed to completely muzzle and ban from it any opposition that remained within it to their ultimate goal spelled above. They managed to achieve these non-trivial goals through skillful and relentless litigation against their opponents (the "Anti-Stratfordians" or "Oxfordians," so to speak) within all the available instances of Wikipedia, culminating in the ultimate instance already mentioned (ArbCom), which finally endorsed all their initial goals and purposes.

This here is just the last hurdle on their path to achieving their ultimate goal on a rather timely fashion, considering the rather 'sensitive' deadline or target date spelled out above.

Now, leaving aside all these political and legal processes for the generation of social knowledge, and even leaving aside the specific merits or clear weaknesses and strong biases of the proposed article, my question to any independent and uncommitted editors still following this process now, as I have for the past 5 or 6 months, is rather simple:


 * Is Wikipedia's own ultimate interest and purpose, that of being a reliable source of impartial information on any given subject (and certainly including this particularly controversial one) really being served by granting this article FA status, and by thus endorsing the proponent group of editors' own particular preconceived views, biases, and goals?

Not in my view. (Disclosure - I am a skeptical in my basic philosphical and historical outlook; this is not my field of specialty and I don't have any a priori ideological committment in the core controversy. I don't know if Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare or if anybody else did it using his name as a pseudonym instead, for whatever reason. It is indeed, in my view, a very interesting historical mystery. I did not directly edit the page. I was involved in the talkpage discussions for a short while and I was nominated in the initial ArbCom request for arbitration as one of the 'outside' editors supporting the minority skeptical opposition views.) warshytalk 02:00, 20 March 2011 (UTC)