Talk:Sarathambal

An entry from Sarathambal appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 30 March, 2007.

Wikipedia

cause celebre

A cause célèbre (of which the plural is causes célèbres) is an issue or incident arousing widespread controversy, outside campaigning and/or heated public debate. It is particularly used for famous long-running legal cases..I don't know what made you to tag every single rape incident as a cause celebre when most of them are certainly not..And also please refrain from giving citations from pro LTTE sites, we already had enough fun reading them.thanks--Iwazaki ^{会話。討論} 16:07, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Fixed to internationally known incident RaveenS 17:28, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Tamilnet consensus and UNDUE and NPOV

Where is the consensus ? in WP:RS ? the only direction from WP:RS is to use WP:UNDUE and WP:NPOV when using Tamilnetsee here, also why are we removing UNHCHR citations ? please make your case before I take this to rfc. Thanks Taprobanus 15:29, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

What consensus. There is a consensus that these lobby groups should not be used. You asked for non Tamil and Sinhalese opinions and you got them. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 02:19, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

My dear friend, a group of editors who are only active in Karnataka related pages and have never ever commented on Sri Lanka conflict related pages unlike you to a discussion can be considered neutral. It is more like a Cabal activity rather than neutral opinion. All neutral people who commented have said Tamilnet is RS source and we should use it with care keeping in mind NPOV and UNDUE in mind. In this page we are discussing not about whether it is RS or not. It is forgone conclusion in the WP:RS as neutral editor USER:Blueboar suggested. Can you suggest as to why Tamilnet fails NPOV and UNDUE in this page ? Thanks Taprobanus 13:59, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

In the RS talk page, it was adviced that while using Tamilnet what should be kept in mind was UNDUE and NPOV. The use of Tamilnet here does not establish any facts.

1. It is used to eloborate the details of a funeral that establishes that dignitaries from all communities attended it. That is the indignation of the rape and murder was felt by both the communities not just the minority Tamil community.

2. It also calrifies that the protest of her death was felt in her native town, Jaffna and Colombo. Without Tamilnet we cannot establish that the protest took place in Jaffna town.

So I would like to know those who keep removing Tamilnet from this article whether UNDUE and NPOV are violated ? Thanks Taprobanus 21:15, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I would like to get the opinions of the other users involved in this dispute. From what I can see, there seems to be no reason for TamilNet to not be included as a reference in this article. Perhaps a mention of the source in the body of the text would be appropriate, but I think TamilNet was just providing facts, and not a biased opinion. I will look into the particular refs later on. Nishkid64 (talk) 16:47, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I will bring in more neutral people to comment on this ? Taprobanus 14:01, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Specifically, what is the dispute here? Outside of some vague idea that one side is using a source that the other does think is reliable, I have no idea what you people are arguing over. Please provide diffs from the page history so outsiders (like me) can see what material is under dispute -- not generalized statements or accusations. -- llywrch 17:38, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

It all began with the removal of Tamilnet as a source from this article. See diff here. We took it to ANI because; it was a pattern of such edits because number of articles were targeted. The ANI discussion was inconclusive although a neutral admin found it not violating RS. Further as ANI is not a tool to resolve conflicts anyway, we carried on the discussion from the ANI to WP:RS talk page where neutral uninvolved editors such as User:Blueboar suggested that what we need to keep in mind while using Tamilnet is not whether it is RS or not (because it is) but to assure not to violate WP:UNDUE and WP:NPOV as it is potentially a biased news source that works within the confines of official censorship in Sri Lanka. Blueboar also suggested that we take the discussion to the concerned talk pages of the articles concerned. This is my attempt to verify whether using Tamilnet in this article violates WP:UNDUE and WP:NPOV. We’ve had over 20 reverts in this article by number of editors and 2 edit protect by admins. I want to use the wiki process to resolve this conflict of continious elimination of this source from this article based on view that it fails WP:RS. We also have a consensus here that it is a Qualified Source. See also discussion about qualified sources in WP:RS talk page. Thanks Taprobanus 18:21, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I was one of the people who said two weeks ago that the discussion on ANI was inconclusive. Since then, we had a discussion on WT:RS which led to a conclusive agreement between all serious editors that Tamilnet can be used as a source, however with attribution such as "pro-rebel". I don't see anything in the discussion of this page that indicates a reason to deviate from that. (By serious editors I mean: Editors who take Wikipedia guidelines and policies and the concerns of other editors seriously, even when they are unfavorable. As far as I'm aware, all arguments against using Tamilnet as a source have been refuted in that discussion.) — Sebastian 20:51, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

The first diff was what I was looking for: the two passages where Tamilnet was cited as a source by one editor, however another editor objected to its use.

In a way, I'm frustrated about this disagreement. Those two items are, I believe, uncontroversial: in the first Tamilnet was cited for a claim that demonstrations took place in one specific village, & in the second, for the identity of the speakers at this woman's funeral. I can't help feeling that had another source had been used for these two items, but the wording was identical, there would have been no controversy; the controversy's not over the facts, but over the source. However, I can't fault the other side in this disagreement: I suspect that this is only one episode in a long-running disputeover content, & that when people saw the citation of Tamilnet here they looked no further & based their actions on that one name alone. We all get caught up in disputes like this, & sometimes we act before we've thought thru the situation. Yet, if that reading of the situation is wrong, then I'm faced with an even more disapointing conclusion: someone is trying to use the rules of Wikipedia to silence an opposing viewpoint, & make an article less NPOV.

The intent of "reliable sources", "unreliable sources", & "qualified sources" is to keep out information that is not only unreliable, but gives undue support to a minority or fringe opinion on a subject. For example, racist propaganda is considered an unreliable source on race for obvious reasons -- except as evidence what specific racists believe. This prevents one side from unfairly citing a dozen sources of marginal importance to offset the information from one well-written & respected source. In this spirit, I believe that "Qualified sources" describe sources that may not be the most desirable in quality, but they are good enough to fit a need. An example would be certain instances of official reports from opposing governments in a war: I've seen some cases where two warring sides will both claim that they inflicted heavy casualties on each other while suffering minimal, if any, themselves. Obviously one -- or both -- sides are lying in this case. Despite this trustworthy intuition, because there are no reasonably objective or impartial sources on this conflict, we are forced to merely cite what is reported, treating them as "qualified sources".

And remember, just like a stopped clock shows the correct time twice a day, even the most unreliable sources occasionally report the truth. If the matter they report is uncontroversial -- or at least plausible -- does it matter that an article cites them? Despite what some SEOs may believe, a mention by Wikipedia does not in itself indicate approval, let alone respectability. -- llywrch 21:46, 18 June 2007 (UTC)