User talk:HG1/sandbox

Summary of arguments and options for renaming Allegations of Israeli apartheid
Groundrules for this page.

Notability. What are the notable subjects to be covered in the article name?
Proposed: There is a notable debate (or controversy, or the like) over similarities and differences between apartheid-era South Africa and Israel.

Arguments for:
 * The template looks like this:
 * Counterarguments:
 * Rebuttals

Arguments against:
 * Counterarguments:
 * Rebuttals

Proposed: There is notable usage of the expression (and/or epithet) "Israeli apartheid"


 * Arguments for/again template

Neutrality of the current title
Proposed: "allegations" is not adequately neutral in this title


 * Arguments for/again template

Proposed: "Israeli apartheid" is not adequately neutral in this title


 * Arguments for/again template

General criteria for the revised title
Proposed: neutrality and self-identify names criteria Proposed: stylistic criteria Proposed: WP:NOR considerations with this article

Analysis of specific alternative terms and titles
"Debate" vs. "Controversy"

"Analogy" and "Comparison"

"in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict"

Requested Rename to Social prejudice in Brazil (or similar)
Looking back at Vitor Cassol's comment, he may be unfamiliar with the Requested Move process. What would happen if some Brazilians submitted a Requested Move with the following statement?


 * A Requested Move Proposal


 * Neutrality first. Brazilians acknowledge racial and social prejudice in our country. However, the current article is not neutral because the term "apartheid" offers only a one-sided comparison of our social inequities. Don't some scholars show that "apartheid" is an exaggerated description, and that Brazil's social problems do not reflect merely government policy (as in South African apartheid)? If  reliable sources compare our socioeconomic problems to a "social apartheid," then I can live with the "apartheid" comparison as long as it is not given undue weight and it is balanced with other views. This lack of neutrality violates the pillar of  neutrality. To ensure that editorial decisions on this article advances toward neutrality, I am requesting that the article Title be given a more neutral Name.


 * Second, self-identification. Wikipedia Naming convention on identities states: "When naming or writing an article about specific people or specific groups always use the terminology which those individuals or organizations themselves use." Such self-descriptions should be verifiable. In the event of naming conflicts, WP Policy specifically asks us to use the objective criterion: "Current self-identifying name of entity". This guideline is related to the fundamental justice of self-determination for any group of people. Brazilians do not identify their nation, policies or political leaders in terms of 'apartheid.' So remove "Brazilian apartheid" from the title and any headings.


 * Against our invoking self-identification, some Users may argue that the phrase "Brazilian apartheid" should not be censored. However, we reject this argument. First, we can live with and would not censor references to "apartheid" that give balanced weight to scholarly sources (and  less weight to exaggerated rhetoric). Second, our  No Censorship policy itself states that its own few exceptions including neutrality: "some articles may include objectionable text, images, or links if they are relevant to the content and  do not violate any of our existing policies (especially neutral point of view) ...." This clearly demonstrates that the NPOV pillar may trump the censorship policy as need be.


 * Against our invoking self-identification, some Users may argue as follows: If other  painful  epithets violate the self-identification  of  people, then the phrase "Brazilian apartheid" should be allowed. However, we reject this argument, as stated in  this well-established essay:


 * "The nature of Wikipedia means that you can't make a convincing argument based on what other articles do or don't exist; because there's nothing stopping anyone from creating any article.... Sometimes arguments are made that other articles have been put forward for AfD and survived/deleted (the most famous example being the Pokémon test), but even here caution should be used. Deletion debates can sometimes be faulty, and even if the debate was correct it can be hard to draw comparisons:  The generic form of this argument, that 'loads of other crap articles exist' is also common. However, Wikipedia recognizes that it suffers from systemic bias (see WP:BIAS)."


 * Against our invoking self-identification, some Users may argue as follows: If Wikipedia allows any allegations of Fooian apartheid titles, WP should be consistent and allow all such titles. However, the essay  finds: "The status of articles on other similar topics has no bearing on a particular article. The process may have been applied inappropriately, ...." Therefore, Wikipedians need not say delete them all, or  keep them all, especially not if they would object to make a  point. (Even were I sympathetic to their point, such motivations have no bearing on a Requested Move.)


 * Third, WP:NOR. Specifically with "Brazilian apartheid", the article itself relies on references for "social apartheid". The phrase "Brazilian apartheid" appears to be original research.


 * Fourth, it is fine for us to revise the Title in this situation. Granted, "alternative article names should not be used as means of settling POV disputes." However, (1) we are not asking to resolve any dispute through a new name, but rather continue applying WP policies to improve editing under a more neutral title. The Requested Move does not rule out future editing, delete, keep and merge decisions. (2) Furthermore, in a naming dispute, the Naming Conflict guidelines "They should instead follow the procedure below to determine common usage on an objective basis. By doing this, ideally, we can choose a name in a systematic manner without having to involve ourselves in a political dispute." (bold added) Objective basis here includes "Current self-identifying name of entity".


 * Fifth, no loaded, one-sided terms like "allegations". Consider WP:WTA, which is derivative of neutrality. WP:WTA rejects words such as "alleged" because "These all share the theme of explicitly making it clear that a given statement is not necessarily factual. This connotation introduces unnecessary bias into the writing; Wikipedia maintains a neutral point of view, and etc."


 * Therefore, we hereby {WP:RM| request the Move]] of this article to: "Social prejudice in Brazil" or "Social inequities in Brazil" or any similarly neutral and synonymous title. Write fairly about our problems but give us back our good name.

Yikes, I can't believe the Brazilians would submit such a long-winded statement! Thanks for your patience.
 * Nu, so how would you vote? On what policy grounds?

Procedural Principles Toward Consensus

We began by exploring Policy Grounds/Principles (G1-2) for a different Article Name. This may deserve more conversation, but so far nobody has rejected these two statements (G1-G2) (3 folks support with limited concerns). I've recently floated Optional Principle (G3), which is sufficient but not necessary grounds for a name change (IMO), and I look forward if that Principle (G3) gains general support. Therefore, let's start up a parallel discussion on our underlying basic principles of Procedure Toward Consensus. These principles have been the premise of my whole exploration and I regret not articulating them earlier. These may appear simple but I'll explain the logic anyway:


 * (P1) Given such a heated dispute, it's helpful to explore a small step that doesn't foreclose the bigger steps, than to Only argue about the big steps. It might lower the level of disputatiousness and build confidence in our ability to find points of agreement. How would that apply here? The bigger steps that we tend to argue about have been: Keep or Delete; Merge or Not; Move to an arguably non-synonymous name (e.g., human rights). If this is right, then: Therefore, it would be wise to explore small steps that still don't close off anybody's desire for a bigger step.
 * PS You can agree to P1 without supporting incrementalism or gradualism in general! Thanks. HG | Talk 09:58, 9 August 2007 (UTC)


 * (P2) If (P1) is right, then one small step would be to explore some kind of change of this Allegations of Israeli apartheid (AoIA) article. Why? "A change in AoIA alone would still allow a generalized or centralized change, but not vice versa -- i.e., but a centralized change would foreclose a change to AoIA alone."  Follow my logic? Without ruling out the possibiity of a future centralized approach, therefore, it's good to explore a small step limited to AoIA alone.


 * (P3) Would an approx. Synonymous Article Name still allow for bigger steps down the road? Let's imagine that there is a Synonymous name that happens to better meet our Policy Grounds, especially neutrality (G1). If we Move to a Synonymous Name, we still leave open the option of more comprehensive, bigger steps (e.g., keep/delete, merge, bigger name changes) -- but not vice versa. For instance, an article with a Synonymous Name could still be deleted or merged somewhere, right? But some of these hotly debated bigger changes, like AfDs and merger proposals, would say goodbye to a synonymous name. (Both merge and non-synoymous name proposals have been sharply split, e.g. April 27th straw poll and Jossi's proposal above.)  Therefore, without prejudging or ruling out bigger steps, it is worth exploring a Synonymous Article Name.

(Concession. I admit that it may feel frustrating and time-inefficient to work out the small steps. But if each step can be built around principles that we can all support, or at least live with and accept, then things may roll smoothly. Nonetheless, if everybody suddenly rallies around a bigger proposal, I'm all for that instead.)

These three Procedural Principles explain why I have been suggesting that we explore a different Article Name that retains the same basic meaning (Synonymous) as the current name, only with fewer POV (one-sided) connotations. If you don't mind, I would like to hear from folks about Principles P1-3. Do you want clarification? Do you agree with P1-P3? If not, could you clearly articulate your reasons?

Thanks so much for reading this and working it through together. HG | Talk 09:58, 9 August 2007 (UTC)