User talk:Razorfishes

December 2009
Welcome to Wikipedia. The project's content policies require that all articles be written from a neutral point of view, and not introduce bias or give undue weight to viewpoints. Please bear this in mind when making edits such as your recent edit to Provisional Irish Republican Army. You may also wish to read the introduction to editing. Thank you. Bradjamesbrown (talk) 17:03, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

"The IRA was removed from the U.S. State Department's official list of terrorist organizations in 2000, but for decades, beginning in the late 1960s, it was considered one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations in the world." http://www.cfr.org/publication/9240/

By the way can you please take a look at the UVF page and see how neutral you think that is? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulster_Volunteer_Force Razorfishes (talk) 17:22, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

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The Wikipedia Tutorial is a good place to start learning about Wikipedia. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on. By the way, you can sign your name on Talk and discussion pages using four tildes, like this: &#126;&#126;&#126;&#126; (the software will replace them with your signature and the date). Again, welcome!  RepublicanJacobite  The'FortyFive' 17:24, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Usage of the word Terrorist
Wikipedia frowns on using the word Terrorist in articles (see WP:TERRORIST). Your applying that word to the Provisional Irish Republican Army article, is a 'no no'. GoodDay (talk) 20:56, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

OK then. Please remove the word "Terrorist" from the UVF page. Currently it reads: "The group is a proscribed organisation in the Republic of Ireland, and a designated terrorist organisation in the United Kingdom"

Community restrictions
O Fenian (talk) 01:33, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Does this apply to the PIRA page also?
 * It does, it applies to all articles that are related to The Troubles, also if in doubt just assume that it is related. BigDunc  13:16, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I am noticing a large disparity in language and tone between the two pages; not just on matters of ideology, but in the reporting of facts - for example "UVF murders" and "IRA killings".
 * Have a read of WP:NPOV and if you feel that you can add make the articles more neutral then get stuck in but remain aware of sanctions as you could easily find yourself blocked, Admins at present have little patience on this issue and are blocking at will. BigDunc  13:41, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. There seems to be an active, vociferous and partisan group at work on the Troubles pages.

Notice
Your addition has been removed, as it appears to have added copyrighted material to Wikipedia without permission from the copyright holder. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions will be deleted. You may use external websites as a source of information, but not as a source of article content such as sentences or images. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. O Fenian (talk) 13:39, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah, the unbiased Fenian. If I rewrote content in the sentences, something tells me you would still delete them. Nice use of bold by the way.

December 2009
Please do not add content without citing verifiable and reliable sources. Before making any potentially controversial edits, it is recommended that you discuss them first on the article's talk page. Please review the guidelines at Citing sources and take this opportunity to add references to the article. Thank you. O Fenian (talk) 23:00, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Please do not add unsourced or original content. Doing so violates Wikipedia's verifiability policy. If you continue to do so, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. O Fenian (talk) 23:02, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

I am new to wikipedia. Learning fast though. I'll be sure and add a link to the Kingsmill Massacre (PIRA killing civilians). Thanks for your advice.


 * That would have nothing to do with the sentence you were editing. O Fenian (talk) 23:21, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

If you are referring to the sentence about PIRA and UVF drugdealing I am picking from numerous sources for that also. Thanks again.


 * No, I was referring to the IRA article. If you had read the sentence you were adding to, you would realise that Kingsmill is nothing to do with that sentence. O Fenian (talk) 23:29, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

I did read the sentence. Is it irrelevant? The sentence refers to those the PIRA were planning to kill, but in fairness I guess the "strategy" and "policy" might have been to kill British soldiers rather than civilians. Is your objection that the Kingsmill Massacre was declared to be by the "South Armagh Republican Action Force" or that such killings which may or may not have been perpetrated by the PIRA were outside PIRA "policy"? Thanks for your continued interest.


 * If you wish to claim any particular incident was part of a policy or strategy, the burden of evidence is on you to provide reliable sources that say exactly that. Or to put it more simply, if you wish to claim that Kingsmill was part of an IRA strategy to "cause the collapse of the Northern Ireland administration and to inflict enough casualties on the British forces that the British government be forced by public opinion to withdraw from Ireland" then you will struggle to find a source that says that. The introduction of the article underwent extensive discussion, I would recommend you propose any changes to it on the article's talk page before editing. O Fenian (talk) 23:48, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, that's the point I was making. It seems that PIRA "policy" and "strategy" was to kill British soldiers rather than to kill civilians (according to Wikipedia, at least), so it seems your objection relates to that. I guess someone should create a new subsection regarding PIRA killing of civilians under "Casualties".


 * User Razorfishes: Please add four of this character "~" to the end of your comments, so that they can be followed more easily. However, more important is O Fenian's general point about not adding unverifiable information, as with "PIRA drug-dealing" in the UVF article. Thanks, Billsmith60 (talk) 12:46, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

I have taken that point on board and will add sources in future. Thanks. One question for you - only if you have time to answer - what of the stylistic inequality between the PIRA entry and the UVF entry? The former speaks only of "killings" and the latter contains inflammatory language like "grisly", "random and lethal" etc. I removed the "random and lethal" language from the UVF article in the spirit of equality, only for someone to put it back in. Conversely, whenever I have tried to add any points relating to the PIRA's civilian victims they generally get deleted. Doesn't seem very neutral or balanced to me. Razorfishes (talk) 18:55, 30 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Hello. I am not an expert on the PIRA article but do agree that it reads a little less emotively than the UVF one and makes the IRA look quite sanitised. And I agree that "grisly" should be removed from the latter, which I have done with an explanation. As to "random" and "lethal", the evidence in the text points to these being justified. Although not detailed here, the UVF's policy was to terrorise the Catholic community into dropping support for the IRA: random attacks, many of which were lethal (like the IRA's, I must admit, and which could go into that article), were the way it went about its business, certainly for much of the conflict. If you have a problem with your documented additions to the PIRA article being deleted, take them to that article's Talk page or contact an administrator. Thanks, Billsmith60 (talk) 21:55, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for a thoughtful response and for your advice. Razorfishes (talk) 18:13, 31 December 2009 (UTC)