User talk:Slrubenstein/archive 6

Your recent edits to Jesus are not NPOV. Kindly read NPOV and discuss things in talk before asserting your own POV. The Rev of Bru 17:11, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Hello, mister, I suggest you to justufy any changes you do in this encyclopedia to be justified in the discuss/talk page. Did you found out what ad verecundiam is?Manco 17:03, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

Jesus help?
Thanks for alerting me to this, I hope my input there was helpful. In this particular case re: BC/AD vs. BCE/CE at Talk:Jesus, I probably fell on the opposite side of your opinion ; however, I generally find BCE/CE more scholarly. -- M P er el ( talk 09:34, May 9, 2005 (UTC)
 * Note that I have now exercised my prerogative to change my mind on the matter : ) -- M P er el ( talk 05:40, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

NPOV math
if you were talking to me, I just made that up for fun. :-p Tomer TALK 18:26, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

Ekke, etc.
Haha... subtle Monty Python reference makes my day. Thanks. Graft 17:37, 12 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Heh. Levity is great.  :-) Tomer TALK  18:14, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

Jesus
Hi Slr. To be honest, I'm not completely sure what the exact changes are, because of the way the diff is formatted, where it'll act as though stuff is a diff when it's in both versions. That said, I don't see why it's POV to focus more on what Christians say about Jesus, given that Jesus's principle significance is as the central figure of Christianity. It's interesting and notable what Jews and Muslims think of Jesus (and rather less so what Buddhists and Hindus and so forth do), but NPOV does not mean acting as though the Christian view of Jesus and the Hindu view of Jesus are equivalently significant. I would also say that I think I agree with jguk that putting the "Jesus's life according to the gospels" first makes the most sense - for most articles on historical subjects we put the basic narrative first, and then go into more analytical issues. Beyond that, there may be some changes that are inappropriate, but I'm not sure. john k 15:47, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

I would sort of concur with this. But I don't know that edit warring is the solution here. It seems as though much of your objection comes from what Jguk said in talk, rather than the actual changes to the article. I'd say it might be best to try to NPOV out the changes that he made, and see if he accepts that, instead of starting a revert war. john k 15:55, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Template:Jewish language
You may be interested in the discussion brewing at Template_talk:Jewish_language. Tomer TALK 17:40, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

CE/BCE
I've got a feeling this has already been discussed at length. However, the procedures behind this project have become so complicated that I don't know how to get things changed any more. I would suggest the talk page for Manual of Style (dates and numbers)????? Deb 21:01, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Proposal
"my proposal is very very long." Make it very very short. ;) Well I mean it would be easiest to do it this way: Make a Wikipedia: page with the full text of the proposal. Put a notpolicy tag on it, and make a summarized version (~three short paragraphs) for each talk page &mdash; pasting them on each relevant one. "Convention" I think is to use Village pump (proposals) - but I think it helps to gain a small consensus first before going public. Where is it now? -SV|t 20:57, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Make a page in the Wikipedia namespace like "Proposal" - put a tag on it at the top, to differentiate it from ,   etc. -SV|t 21:40, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
 * PS I forgot to ask - what scope is it in? Does it apply generally or to just certain particular articles. In the second case, it helps to go through a WikiProject which may be applicable. SV|t 21:40, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I just had an edit conflict with SV, but I'll paste this in again anyway.
 * Steve, you were wondering how to create a proposal page. Go to the search box, type in Wikipedia: followed by your chosen title for the page e.g. BCE/CE (assuming it allows / as a character in a title), then once you're there, say you want to create the page, enter your text, and save. The not-policy template goes at the top, and is . SlimVirgin (talk)  21:42, May 15, 2005 (UTC)
 * And see How to create policy. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:45, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

Re:question for aquaculturalists
Hi there, I just stumbled across your question on talk:fish farming and talk:aquaculture. When full of eggs, female salmon are gravid. I don't know if anyone beat me to it, and if it's still any use to you now, but thought I'd leave you a note. Anilocra 21:37, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Jesus x 2
Will look into this during my half hour :-) Ta bu shi da yu 00:22, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
 * P.S. be warned I am not an entirely neutral party here, but will do my best. - Ta bu shi da yu 00:23, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Hmmm... I think the article isn't too bad. Could do with a LOT of fine tuning, and I recommend liberal use of Template:Ref and Template:Note. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:38, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Graft's comments
Hey SLR... I assume you were talking about the Jesus/Rewrite dealy (earlier). Seems like he's wasting his time... no point making a big deal about it, I think, since it'll never actually make it into the real article. Graft 00:27, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your invitation
I appreciate it. &larr;Humus sapiens&larr;Talk 07:23, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

BC/AD
I realise that it isn't seen as NPOV, however in my view it's also POV to say that BCE/CE should superceded by an non-Christian dating system that excludes many hundreds of years of dating. Just my $0.02... oh... I also failed to correctly parse that previous edit in Jesus. Oops! Ta bu shi da yu 05:00, 16 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Indeed, I also respect your viewpoint but very much disagree with it. I dispute the fact that BCE and CE is neutral. It is entirely non-neutral if you happen to be a traditionalist (in regards to these things) or if you are a fundamentalist and/or evangelical Christian. People may find this an attack on a well known and previously undisputed date convention.
 * I might also point out that there are many non-Christians I know of who insist on sticking to BC/AD. Does this mean that they are pushing a Christian POV? Not at all! Some of these people I know are devout Atheists, and one of the people I know is a Buddhist. They stick with it because it's well known and almost universally accepted (you might dispute this).
 * I might also point out that the New South Wales state government of Australia disagrees with it, as they had public servants who tried to change the date convention from BC/AD to BCE/CE and had to have it officially overturned. - Ta bu shi da yu 06:00, 16 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Not at all. I assume good faith based on experience and due to policy. Like I say, I don't think that using BC/AD is pushing a POV (even though I am biased here). The whole problem of not "privileging any point of view" is that BCE/CE is, in fact, a POV. If you think about it, the whole point of AD/BC was to place an arbitrary event in history (the birth of Jesus) as a way of dividing two common eras. Renaming them to BCE/CE seems, to be honest, a little disingeneous. The event in history (whether you beleive it or not) was the birth of Christ! Claiming that this is a "common" thing to all cultures and creeds seems in itself to be pushing a POV.


 * To be honest though, it's really all a bit of a storm in a teacup. If someone wants to call it BCE/CE, more power to them. It doesn't affect my own faith too much, it only makes me a little annoyed that some with agendas (no offence to yourself, of course!) are trying to remove something that is common parlance. - Ta bu shi da yu 06:20, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Great presentation. I agree with you, and have voted accordingly. An encyclopedia should strive to be scholastic in approach, and BCE/CE are scholastically preferable. Whig 06:56, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Problem with the A proposal re BCE-CE Debate page
I think the Neutral point of view/BCE-CE Debate page seems to have been quite messed up. Bits are duplicated and there are two sections for voting. Sukh 14:11, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm here to report the same problem. The file is too large for me to fix the duplication. I tried but I had to give up..... -- PFHLai 14:29, 2005 May 16 (UTC)

Page locked?
If you locked the page to keep me from vandalizing it, you can go ahead and unlock it...I've got to study for finals all day, and my frustration with the nonsense going on there has abated greatly, now that I've had a good night's sleep. :-) Tomer TALK  17:52, May 16, 2005 (UTC)


 * Argh. I came back and see I've been getting messages! :-p  I really do have a final tomorrow, as well as 2 on thursday and one on friday.  Color me useless for a while.  I don't really disagree with what you're trying to accomplish, I just think it's too sweeping.  I also don't agree that B/CE is NPOV.  I think it's just indicative of a different POV, and a not very well-founded one, IMHO.  Like I said, it's like an new dress with old shoes.  Not only is it jarring to most casual readers (albeit not as jarring as having BC/AD and B/CE mixed in the same article), it perpetuates the lie that cheeses is the mashiach, with another lie, that we don't actually count our years from (a miscalculation of the date of) his birth.  If CE had been started as an abbr. for Christian Era, or if there were some way of changing consensus that that's what it actually means, I'd have less of a problem with it...although technically, that'd also be a misrepresentation, since the "christian era" in Europe didn't really start until after cheeses was supposedly killed, it didn't get moving until about 150, and didn't become prominent until the 300s.  That it is "Common" is a misnomer as well.  Nothing about Christian and Jewish history was "common" until the haskala, and then only marginally so until the `atzma'uth.  It's true that some Jewish communities lived in Christian lands (although their number was rather insignificant, especially by comparison to Jewish communities in other lands, until the Middle Ages), but nothing about Jewish culture in Europe was shared with Christian culture except in a few (temporally) fleeting (geographically) isolated incidents.  Personally, I see the spread of, and advocacy for, B/CE thing as more of an attempt to whitewash the seriously dysfunctional Jewish-Christian "relations" of the past 2 millennia.  Its solitary mention (as VE) on a 16th century tombstone in England does little to sway my opinion, as I am inclined to regard such a usage characteristic e of what I've already described as "fleeting" and "isolated".  As for my modification of your proposal, it seems such a de facto policy already exists.  The real question now, is to determine where exactly which letters are appropriate.  Kol tov.  Tomer TALK  19:35, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

BC/AD proposal
Just a quick note: I saw your latest response to me in and you seem to be attributing an argument to me that I didn't make. I don't believe I have said anything in relation to the Gregorian calendar argument, but the first part of your response is clarifying your position on that argument. Rather than my adding more content to that page (which is currently protected anyway), I figured I'd let you know so you can revisit your reply and adjust it accordingly. BTW, I have enjoyed the overall positive nature of our interaction despite our disagreement about the BC/AD subject. I hope the whole matter does not cause too much Wikipedia fatigue on your part, as I consider your contributions to be quite valuable. Regards&mdash;Alanyst 16:04, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Slrubenstein: Have two brief questions regarding the proposal, (1) How are historic references to be cited? Are they to be disclaimed as in violation of Wikipedia NPOV policy or reverted to comply. (2) Where do I vote, assuming I wish to abandon my neutral stance not favoring either (by default, maintain the old system). Thank you. Nobs 18:46, 16 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Am still reading your proposal and it seems you are framing the issues succinctly. Let me share my private personal views:  I have no objection to the CE/BCE convention provided it is clear: this is not a victory of the atheist rationalist school over religion in an attempt to discard Christ and Christianity.  It is a reform already adopted by Christian theological institutions intended to be inclusive.  Vulgar atheists are then free to use the Common Era designation without Christian oppression.  I have no problem with Wikipedia making CE/BCE the standard for the next 5000 years (unless the Good Lord returns before) and the atheist/rationalist school can continue decieving themselves they are living in the year 2005.Nobs 19:28, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Divisions
For many many years everyone was happy with BC/AD. Indeed, presumably you did not oppose them too much yourself. Then someone decided they did not like the terms and came up with the idea of using BCE/CE instead. Arguing strongly in favour of the change. Teaching people that BC/AD was wrong, and that it meant things that it does not mean. Teaching them to look into etymology, to ignore the fact that words, phrases and notations change their meanings. Teaching them to divide, to harangue, to not care who they offend, but to demand that because they have taught themselves to be offended, that everyone should bow to their demands.

It is a route of divisiveness. Not of amicability. All it will do is make the world an angrier place, and for what? There are plenty of lives to be saved, plenty of poverty to ease, plenty of diseases to cure. And instead, some choose the route to enmity. They seek to create religious divide, where there previously was understanding.

And unfortunately, that is the route you are choosing. You will not save the world, or make it a better place. You may drive away some WP readers and editors who are not at ease with your style - and WP will lose. You will cause a lot of discussion and wasted hours, and for what?

You know such changes as the one you propose have caused considerable offence everywhere (at least outside N America) where they have been made, as you have been informed many times before. And yet you choose, from a position of knowledge, to deliberately cause this offence?

Please calm down. You do not need to agree with everything you see, but please do not use WP as a route to force others down your chosen route of finding offence in the innocuous. It just makes the world a sadder place. Kind regards, jguk 18:56, 16 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Why do you think I am forcing my views on Wikipedia? No one has to even look at my proposal.  And anyone who disagrees with my proposal (e.g. you) is welcome to express objections in the discussion sections, and to vote against it. Slrubenstein   |  Talk  19:00, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

A proposal re BCE-CE Debate
Please stop deleting this page. It is at the very least necessary for GFDL compliance and using the history, and in theory the edits made to the other page should be done to that (in fact, you should have made them and moved that one back, rather than forking onto the redirect). --SPUI (talk) 19:39, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Then MOVE IT BACK. Don't delete the version with all the history. --SPUI (talk) 20:04, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Gene Nygaard did not "create" A proposal re BCE-CE Debate. He used the "move page" button to move it there. I would think that as an administrator you would know such things, thus I didn't explain it in detail. The history of A proposal re BCE-CE Debate has been restored (something which I could not do as a non-admin), but it's still not on the right page. --SPUI (talk) 20:19, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

BCE / CE
Thank you for your kind words... and I really should apologize for letting my own POV blind me. -- ran (talk) 19:48, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

While your continuing efforts on this front strike me as somewhat quixotic, I also want to express my respect and admiration for the amount of thought and energy you have put into this issue. It rarely happens that a single individual on Wikipedia can get large parts of the community to reconsider established practices. I'm afraid many people have not read the proposal, and believe it to prescribe CE/BCE; my only criticism would be that there is no concise summary before the vote for the (inevitable) lazy majority.

If this proposal fails, I suggest continuing this on the technical front, and working towards automatic conversion (which of course raises the question what the default should be -- I'll leave that for another debate).--Eloquence* 21:48, May 16, 2005 (UTC)


 * SLR, have you considered proposing the use of astronomical epoch J2000.0 with the Astronomical year numbering? If these were embedded in everyone's preferences, then everyone who uses the 2005 date, for example, would automatically have it stored in the database in a neutral date format, but printed out in their preference. Thus someone who uses a Hindu calendar based on the Saka Era would enjoy a date with a base epoch 1922 years before J2000.0, an astronomical date. Someone preferring to date something using the Bangladeshi calendar would see a date with a base epoch 416 years before J2000.0, etc. Each civilization could then see the dates translated to their personal preference. If we simply stuck with an AD-BC/BCE-CE etc without also implementing the institution of an astronomical epoch, then we would simply be "baking-in" something that is still POV. But I think people would understand that an astronomical epoch as convenient as J2000.0. It would be a signal that Wikipedia is sensitive to personal preference, and has thought about the problems of POV, whether it be the date of the detection of the supernova in the Crab Nebula, or the date of the first Atomic bomb test July 16, 1945 (which I could also propose, as 55 years before J2000.0). As it stands, the BCE proposal might be viewed as premature. But with astronomical epoch, we are that much closer to a universal calendar. Ancheta Wis 22:32, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Need your opinion Nazi vs, German occupation
Please drop off your vote: Votes for deletion/German military occupation of Norway during World War II --Leifern 22:57, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

WTF?
"Slrubenstein needs to impress the world that he is the most important guy ever, and then in 500yrs or so they'll start dating things by when he was born (or died, or conquered europe, or whatever). Until then, give it a rest. Or in other words, original research, political correctness, doublespeak, and the opposite of why I like encyclopedias. Sam Spade 23:38, 16 May 2005 (UTC)"


 * I guess it is sort of comforting, that the only way you can knock my proposal is through an ad hominem remark. But then again, this is pretty much what I have come to expect from you. Slrubenstein | Talk 23:41, 16 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Where is my ad hominem? Where do I say "his argument is wrong because he's stupid, or foriegn, or because he stole my prize pig"? I see your insult of course, but where is mine? Sam Spade 23:46, 16 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Sam almost has a point. As far as ad hominems go, that's pretty mild compared to the usual level of his work, like that seen here or here. FeloniousMonk 07:46, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Did you think I was implying that you are megalomaniacal? If so, I wasn't. I was saying that until common usage changes, it would be unencyclopedic to change our usage, and that in order to change common usage you';d have to be megalomaniacal. I didn't mean to suggest you'd actually attempt such a thing... :/

Sam Spade 23:49, 16 May 2005 (UTC)


 * A reply is @ User_talk:Sam_Spade. Sam Spade 14:49, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Ad hominem
''I do not think Jguk and Trodel are being honest or sincere when they say this. However, for the sake of argument, I will first take them seriously before explaining why I think they are hypocrites.'' &mdash; I think saying things like this weakens your argument. &mdash; Matt Crypto 03:13, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Your comment on my page is reasonable. But towards the end of the section in question, I do try to explain why -- when they say AD and BC do not express a Christian POV -- I think they are being hypocrites.  Do you think I am misinterpreting what they say, or just that I should express my criticism (because they really do admit that they are expressing a Christian POV) differently?  Thanks, Slrubenstein   |  Talk  14:14, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I would advise you to simply counter people's arguments and steer clear of criticising people directly. It would be quite sufficient to say, "Jguk and Trodel argue X. I disagree with their argument because of Y and Z." It doesn't strengthen your case if you label opponents hypocrites and call into question their honesty and sincerity. It lowers the dispute into a matter of ego, politics and personality, rather than of reasoned, rational argument. &mdash; Matt Crypto 14:47, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Invitation to Inquiry
Slrubenstein, you are cordially invited to join the [[Wikipedia:-7d534b2510332 Content-Disposition: form-data; name="wpTextbox1"

Your recent edits to Jesus are not NPOV. Kindly read NPOV and discuss things in talk before asserting your own POV. The Rev of Bru 17:11, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Hello, mister, I suggest you to justufy any changes you do in this encyclopedia to be justified in the discuss/talk page. Did you found out what ad verecundiam is?Manco 17:03, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your invitation
I appreciate it. &larr;Humus sapiens&larr;Talk 07:23, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

BC/AD
I realise that it isn't seen as NPOV, however in my view it's also POV to say that BCE/CE should superceded by an non-Christian dating system that excludes many hundreds of years of dating. Just my $0.02... oh... I also failed to correctly parse that previous edit in Jesus. Oops! Ta bu shi da yu 05:00, 16 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Indeed, I also respect your viewpoint but very much disagree with it. I dispute the fact that BCE and CE is neutral. It is entirely non-neutral if you happen to be a traditionalist (in regards to these things) or if you are a fundamentalist and/or evangelical Christian. People may find this an attack on a well known and previously undisputed date convention.
 * I might also point out that there are many non-Christians I know of who insist on sticking to BC/AD. Does this mean that they are pushing a Christian POV? Not at all! Some of these people I know are devout Atheists, and one of the people I know is a Buddhist. They stick with it because it's well known and almost universally accepted (you might dispute this).
 * I might also point out that the New South Wales state government of Australia disagrees with it, as they had public servants who tried to change the date convention from BC/AD to BCE/CE and had to have it officially overturned. - Ta bu shi da yu 06:00, 16 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Not at all. I assume good faith based on experience and due to policy. Like I say, I don't think that using BC/AD is pushing a POV (even though I am biased here). The whole problem of not "privileging any point of view" is that BCE/CE is, in fact, a POV. If you think about it, the whole point of AD/BC was to place an arbitrary event in history (the birth of Jesus) as a way of dividing two common eras. Renaming them to BCE/CE seems, to be honest, a little disingeneous. The event in history (whether you beleive it or not) was the birth of Christ! Claiming that this is a "common" thing to all cultures and creeds seems in itself to be pushing a POV.


 * To be honest though, it's really all a bit of a storm in a teacup. If someone wants to call it BCE/CE, more power to them. It doesn't affect my own faith too much, it only makes me a little annoyed that some with agendas (no offence to yourself, of course!) are trying to remove something that is common parlance. - Ta bu shi da yu 06:20, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Great presentation. I agree with you, and have voted accordingly. An encyclopedia should strive to be scholastic in approach, and BCE/CE are scholastically preferable. Whig 06:56, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Problem with the A proposal re BCE-CE Debate page
I think the Neutral point of view/BCE-CE Debate page seems to have been quite messed up. Bits are duplicated and there are two sections for voting. Sukh 14:11, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm here to report the same problem. The file is too large for me to fix the duplication. I tried but I had to give up..... -- PFHLai 14:29, 2005 May 16 (UTC)

Page locked?
If you locked the page to keep me from vandalizing it, you can go ahead and unlock it...I've got to study for finals all day, and my frustration with the nonsense going on there has abated greatly, now that I've had a good night's sleep. :-)