User talk:Jimbo Wales

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Religious neutrality

A hilye – Ottoman calligraphic panel by Hafiz Osman (1641–1698), a master of the art.

Hilyeler contain a description of the prophet Muhammad's physical appearance based on the hadith and were often used as wall decorations, fulfilling a similar role to that played by images of Jesus in the Christian tradition.

While containing a verbal description of what Muhammad looked like, hilyeler leave picturing the prophet's appearance to the reader's imagination, in line with the aniconic nature of Islamic art.

In the context of an ANI discussion I observed how striking it is that the illustrations in our article on Jesus are fully consistent with and celebratory of Christian tradition, while the illustrations in our article on Muhammad are not only unrepresentative of how Muhammad is customarily portrayed within Islamic tradition, but actually offensive to many muslim readers.

What does this say about the neutrality that this project aspires to, and the extent to which we are able to live up to that lofty aim?

The most active contributors to the Talk:Muhammad/images page do not appear to include any muslims. How can we involve some of the world's 1.5 billion muslims in the discussion? --JN466 17:28, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Oh, shall we move the discussion here now too? Fun! I'll simply point out that titling a thread "religious neutrality" while the jist of the content is to propose ways to bias Wikipedia towards a religious viewpoint is... interesting. Resolute 17:34, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm not saying there's nothing to this, Jayen, but what types of image are you supposing might be included in the Jesus article that might be encyclopaedic but not "fully consistent with and celebratory of Christian tradition"? --FormerIP (talk) 17:37, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Maybe something like this? or the crucifixion of Brian under "Reception"? But the real issue isn't that we aren't shocking Christians enough on the Jesus article. It is that we are shocking Muslims on the Muhammad article for no good reason. Even most liberal Muslims who wouldn't mind naturalistic depictions of Muhammad in a more appropriate context (such as the article Depictions of Muhammad) will feel that this is a deliberate insult to and humiliation of Muslims. Hans Adler 20:22, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

My point isn't that we should be working harder to shock Christians, but that the two cases are not usefully comparable. To come up with images that might offend some Christians, more or less by the same token, you have to go looking for images that are simply not encyclopaedic for the Jesus article. Having no images of Mohammed in his article would not conform to our normal standards, however - it would involve making an exception. So the question, I think, is not to do with consistency. On the contrary, editors who wish to exclude images of Mohammed - to say nothing about whether they have a good case or not - are arguing for inconsistency. --FormerIP (talk) 21:43, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Displaying images drawn by Muslims is designed to insult and humiliate Muslims? You keep repeating that same bad faith argument as if doing so will make it true. You might have had an argument if the Norwegian cartoons were in the Muhammad article. The historical imagery currently employed was not created with the intent of being provocative. There is a difference, even if you willfully blind yourself to it. Resolute 20:43, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

See outgroup homogeneity bias for the scientific explanation of Resolute's accusation of bad faith. Hans Adler 20:55, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Being consistent with how groups who affiliate with a given religious tradition have depicted various aspects of their tradition is not only more respectful of those groups but also much more educational than adding fringe depictions. Those oddball depictions can be presented within the specific context that they are meaningful but should not dominate the main entries for major religious figures, etc. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 21:33, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Ahh, but there's the rub. Hans' use of outgroup homogeneinty bias is rather ironic, given he is the one presuming that all Muslims are the same. As most people in favour of retaining the images will tell you, that belief is not uniform in the Muslim world. In short, they are not all alike. In fact, I would point out that commons:Category:Muslim depictions of Muhammad has over 100 such depictions, of which only five are used in the article. There are about 40 non-Muslim created images, one of which exists in the article. This is out of 23 total images in the article, including those that head the various "part of a series on..." templates. Resolute 22:34, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I referred specifically to the effect which the atypical overuse of images must have on liberal Muslims who wouldn't normally mind such depictions: solidarisation with their extreme faithmates who reject them. Your mirroring of my accusation is therefore obviously invalid. I note that I have observed such unfounded "you, too!" reactions many times in tendentious editors. It is a typical sign of editors who try to win a debate without listening to their opponents. Hans Adler 22:54, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Resolute I assure you that liberal Muslims do not have depictions of Muhammad in their homes, in their libraries, or at their mosques. They may tolerate such images, or not find them offensive, or as offensive as some of their more conservative compatriots, but there is nothing normal about these depictions within Islam now or historically. Keep in mind that I specifically spoke of something other than the offensiveness issue, and that was mainstream practice, which has always been iconoclastic in this regard, among liberals and conservatives. It is only a matter of degree after that. So there's no rub there I'm afraid.Griswaldo (talk) 23:56, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

And yet, 100+ images in our own repository, drawn by Muslims, suggests your assessment is not quite accurate. Resolute 23:59, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

No they suggest no such thing. 100+ images is nothing. Do you know how long Islam has been around and how many Muslims have set foot on the planet over those years? Please see the Depictions of Muhammad entry for more information. Depictions of Muhammad have always been rare for this very reason. The traditional way to represent him is through his calligraphy and written descriptions. Depictions of Muhammad are not even a minority phenomenon within Islam, it is virtually fringe. For sure, given the controversy now and in the past it is important for us to have entries like the depictions entry, but that entry covers a fringe phenomenon within the tradition. It is not helpful to make inferences based on how many images we have. Instead of doing that read some books on the subject, or, heaven forbid, talk to a Muslim or two. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 00:04, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Depictions of Muhammed is a Wikipedia article on a topic about which people have opinions, so it is not easy to be sure how far to rely on it to resolve disagreements between Wikipedians. But I think this misses the point. How does the (supposed) fact that that a particular class of images relating to the subject of an article is rare lead to the conclusion that they should be excluded from the article? --FormerIP (talk) 00:21, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

This is a general problem. There's Genesis creation narrative while everything else is a "myth". Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 20:41, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Excellent point. Hans Adler 20:55, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Not the same. The point is to be consistent with scholarship on these subjects. "Genesis creation myth" is not consistent with scholarship, nor are depictions of Muhammad. So Seb has that backwards actually. I do agree with Hans and Jayen that we are unnecessarily offending Muslims and will reiterate that it is not consistent with scholarship either, which tends to be respectful. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 21:27, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I see nothing offensive in the current version of the Muhammad article. There are a few depictions from Islamic manuscripts that are commonly included in every article of historical figures when such images are available, plus one Russian painting in the Western views section. Asking Wikipedia to conform to the religious doctrine of some Muslims on this is absurd. What's next? Burqa for all pictures of women on Wikipedia lest they be offensive to some? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 22:33, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

• Let's hope the discussion at Talk:Muhammad/images will suggest solutions to these long-term problems. -Wikid77 22:59, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
  • That page appears to be dominated by editors who have decided long ago that they want these images in the article—for no good academic reason that I can see, because they are fringe images within the Islamic tradition. (For reference, I was unable to find a single such image in the Micropaedia and Macropaedia Britannica articles on Muhammad.) To illustrate the Islamic mainstream, and actually teach readers something about Islamic aesthetics and the way Muhammad is represented in Islam, I believe we ought to be showing images of calligraphy, symbols and pictograms associated with Muhammad, famous examples of such in the masonry of major mosques, hilye (!) images [1][2], perhaps images of the various relics of Muhammad, etc.—in other words, things that are actually religiously meaningful to a large number of muslims. --JN466 01:04, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
• I've been very confused about this line of discussion both at ANI and on here. If you think the images that are being used in the Muhammad article are not properly educational or representative of appropriate depictions of Muhammad, then...propose other images to replace them? Have other alternative images been proposed? Because i'm not seeing that. Silverseren^C 23:19, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
  • I'll hazard a guess that most of the editors wishing to illustrate the article on Muhammad using the same approach as is used in the article on Jesus don't actually know very much about Islam. That ignorance shows and is an embarrassment to Wikipedia. Islamic culture is simply different in that respect, and we are not showing the genuine richness of Islam's own approach, nor do we give the reader much indication that such a difference in approach exists. We could probably do with a bit of outreach to Islamic studies scholars. --JN466 03:16, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes. It makes no more sense to base what (if any) depictions of Muhammad we have in Wikipedia articles on our treatment of pictures of Jesus than the other way round. It is easy enough to ascertain that many Muslims consider depictions of the prophet in art to be inappropriate, and that is what is at issue here - not how Christians portray Jesus (or other religions portray their gods, saints, prophets and other sacred entities). It seems to me that though 'Wikipedia is not censored' implies we can show illustrations of the prophet, it doesn't follow that we have to, and any debate on the subject needs to be based on the principle that we are here to educate and inform, rather than just show pretty pictures. If a reader of our articles on Islam wonders why there are no illustrations of its founder, reading why might be more educational than any picture. Yes, we should have an article on 'depictions of the prophet Muhammad in art' or similar, to show how, in contrast to the norm, many depictions have been created, but we don't need to gratuitously include images elsewhere (which are in any case only depictions based on the imaginations of those creating them many years later) just to prove a point. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:43, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

• • • That's the last thing we need, more outside advocacy and antagonism. This is a very simple situation. We have an article on Muhammad. Images and depictions of artistic value of Muhammad exist, created at various points and times in history. We place this images in the Muhammad article, because, hey, we're a visual media and we like that sorta thing.
    • There is no other aspect to consider. We do not take into account that some Muslims believe imagery to be idolatrous. This is the English Wikipedia, written primarily for a Western audience. We do not defer to religious custom, We do not render all mentions of "God" as "G-d". We do not close down on Sunday to observe the Sabbath.
    • The only leg any of your argument could stand on is if the article contained renderings from something like the Draw Muhammad Day. Those things are contemporary, amateurish depictions created with the specific aim to denigrate, and offer to value to an biographical article on Muhammad the man. Tarc (talk) 03:51, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
      • Well, I do think there is another leg to stand on. The article has 19 images in all. 6 are geographical, 4 are of buildings, 1 is of the Quran, 1 is of Mohammed's seal, 1 (the lead image) is of calligraphy, and 6 are depictions of Muhammad (of these, 4 show him unveiled, 1 shows him veiled, and 1 shows him as a flame). Those 6 images, and in particularly the 4 that show his features, are vastly undue, even completely disregarding the aspect of offensiveness, because they represent an extremely rare type of image that is simply nowhere near representative of how Muhammad is customarily portrayed. But given that they do also represent the type of image that is most offensive to some muslims, why exactly should our article feature 4 examples of an extremely uncommon and unrepresentative kind of image that causes maximum offence? --JN466 04:31, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

"This is the English Wikipedia, written primarily for a Western audience". Of all the pig-ignorant arguments you could come up with, this has to be the winner. Even ignoring the implicit assumption that English speakers are necessarily Western, and that it isn't possible to be both a Muslim and a Westerner, on what basis do you assume that Westerners are so driven by a desire for 'images' that they are incapable of understanding why others have a different opinion? Try to come up with arguments that don't insult everyone... AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:47, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Actually, Wikipedia itself has some statistics on it's editorship that support what Tarc is trying to say. Additionally, various articles on the subject (also right here on Wikipedia) support what he is trying to say. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 04:51, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Analogy: I write a book in American English and publish it here. How many non-US English speaking readers do you think I will have? And how many say... Muslim readers from overseas... do you think will instead read the version on their Wikipedia? People keep using worldwide numbers as if every person of Islamic faith comes here, even though they live halfway across the world and have their own wiki. Hope that clarifies. Still not sure why it's relevant. The different opinion is based on religious prohibitions that do not apply, otherwise the Scientology article would have been lobotomized already. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 04:55, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Is this a competition to see who can come up with the most ignorant posting on Jimbo's talk page? Muslims don't have 'a Wikipedia', any more than Christians do - and neither do they necessarily live 'half way across the World'. Incidentally, even though I prefer British English, I am actually capable of comprehending the U.S. version - I suggest you find a publisher with a little more worldly knowledge. AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:03, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry Andy, I didn't realize that.[3][4] ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 05:09, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the link to websites that aren't 'Muslim Wikipedias' - but what exactly is that supposed to prove beyond the fact that evidently you don't understand the difference between 'a Wiki' and Wikipedia. AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:16, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I have to agree with Andy here. The English Wikipedia is written in our current global lingua franca. English is, far and away, the most common second language learnt around the world (and a substantial number of those second language speakers are talking to each other, not to native speakers). While native anglophone non-muslim editors are in the majority, our readership extends into every country and community like no other wikipedia. Our policies and practices reflect this internationalism. While no language community "owns" their Wikipedia, this is particularly important to remember with en.wikipedia.

On the same principle, muslims do not own the page on Muhammad, so we are not bound to follow majority muslim practice. We might want to avoid offence where we can. Is it not technically possible to have an opt-in "see the pictures" option so that we can manage any religious sensitivities? We're not paper, we can do this kind of thing.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 05:22, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, there is another point that I am trying to make here. The page on Jesus gives an accurate impression of how Jesus is portrayed in Christianity. But the Muhammad page does not do that. It is badly skewed. This is a question of accuracy, of portraying a world culture knowledgeably, and correctly. --JN466 05:27, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Just left a message on your talk page a few minutes before your post here. I'm willing to help tackle that. But not till tomorrow. I really need sleep. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 05:34, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Is this an argument that the pictures are POV? I suppose one could formulate an argument that inclusion of so many pictures is undue, given their rarity. Would you get rid of all pictures of Muhammad, or simply reduce their number?VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 06:42, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely; POV and undue, as not reflecting mainstream depictions. Personally, I would considerably increase the number of calligraphy images in the article, include an image of the PBUH/SAWS symbol that is commonly printed in Islamic works after each mention of the prophet, show some hilyes (these are calligraphically executed copies of extant, quite detailed descriptions of what Muhammad physically looked like). I would have a paragraph explaining the general absence of images of Muhammad in Islamic religious art, as a point that sets the Islamic treatment of Muhammad apart from the treatment of other religious founders by their respective cultures, and I would mention that there have been some exceptions throughout history. I would add a link to Depictions of Muhammad, show the images there, and not show them in the article on Muhammad. That's if it were up to me alone. I could compromise to the extent of showing one (veiled) example image, but personally think it is undue. Cheers. --JN466 22:04, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Ironically, your assertion that this is POV is POV itself. The placement and number of images of Muhammad are already in a decidedly minority position on the article. This, despite the fact that Wikipedia is not an Islamic project. Resolute 22:23, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Just to put this back into perspective (as though that's going to happen…) I want to point out that this whole huge mess started because I made the seemingly common-sense assertion that Wikipedia should not offend groups of people without good reason. Doing so damages the reputation of the encyclopedia. If we have to offend people to write a good article, that's unavoidable, but offending people for silly reasons is just… dumb.

There's no real reason that those images of Muhammad need to be on that article (they are not common representations or factual illustrations), and everyone knows that Islam has a proscription against such images; any editor with a smidgeon of common sense and common courtesy would just not do it. But on Wikipedia, apparently, it is a matter of great consternation that any editor should be asked to show common sense or common courtesy.

I'm sorry to say it, but as long as these kinds of attitudes prevail on project, Wikipedia is never going to be a serious encyclopedia; there's too much Jerry Springer in the mix for that to ever happen. --Ludwigs2 05:54, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs has proposed that the May 2011 Foundation resolution concerning controversial content should be heeded here. It urges us to pay particular attention to curating all kinds of potentially controversial content, including determining whether it has a realistic educational use. I don't believe the many depictions of Muhammad at Muhammad add to the readers' understanding of the topic in any meaningful way, and their presence may reasonably be read as gratuitous offensiveness. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 06:40, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I would argue that they actually harm the reader's understanding, because in showing them we create the impression that such images are commonplace, and fail to show the actual iconic representations of Muhammad that are the direct cultural equivalent of what we have in the Jesus article.They would look like this: [5] [6] [7] The effect of our present article is not unlike the effect the Jesus article would have on the reader if you showed them just one cathedral painting, plus 6 shock images of Christ like Piss Christ and Jesus on the electric chair (also shown in a cathedral, but hardly representative of Christian depictions of Christ). You could argue NOTCENSORED there too, but no one would go for it, because editors would realise that it would be completely undue to focus on such exceptional images, while neglecting the mainstream depictions of Christ. The problem with Islam, unfortunately, is that our editorship is generally less familiar with it and doesn't pick up on such subtleties. Yet we are supposed to educate, and provide a glimpse of that world. --JN466 07:13, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

So would you want to get rid of all the depictions, or just most of them? All would look like censorship, but most could be argued under WP:UNDUE.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 07:30, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

One or two images illustrating a small section on depictions of Muhammad would be educational. Everybody arguing at Talk:Muhammad/images supports that. The objections are to six artists' impressions of historical events, painted centuries after the events, that are no more informative about the events than a drawing by you or me would be. The only relevant information they convey is something about the development of historical depictions of Muhammad, which is addressed well in Depictions of Muhammad. The objections are not to pictures of Muhammad, they are to gratuitous WP:UNDUE or misleading use of such images. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 07:56, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

The problem with the discussion of "religious neutrality" is that whatever precedent we set cannot be limited to images of Muhammad. Followers of just about every religion have issues which they would prefer not to have mentioned. Would "religious neutrality" prevent us from discussing L. Ron Hubbard's military records because doing so may be offensive to some Scientologists? Would the same principle prevent an article questioning the sexuality of Jesus? What about the offense caused to Christians who dispute the divinity of Krishna? Where would it stop? While we shouldn't go out of our way to offend anyone, neither should we go out of our way to avoid offending anyone. We're here to build an encyclopedia, not a religious text.   Will Beback  talk  09:25, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

You've missed the point. The discussion is about accurately representing an artistic tradition and, to a lesser extent, not gratuitously offending readers. No one's objecting to offensive content where it adds to the readers' understanding. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 09:39, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I may be mistaken, but I thought I'd seen people here and at Talk:Muhammad/images talking about making significant changes to articles to avoid offending adherents to a religion. While we certainly don't want to offend anyone unnecessarily, that should be among the least considerations when compiling this encyclopedia. The appearance is that some think think it should be a primary consideration.   Will Beback  talk  10:38, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Will all the comments here seem to align with two important distinctions from the straw many you are presenting. 1) That offending material should be removed especially if it serves no educational value and 2) that in the case of the Muhammad depictions, mainstream education sources and scholarship do not use these fringe images making their inclusion not only UNDUE in terms of coverage in reliable sources but nonrepresentational of the tradition and therefore noneducational. Holding these opinions does not open the door to what you are discussing at all. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 11:56, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

It's axiomatic that everything in the encyclopedia should be encyclopedic. Images of subjects are encyclopedic. We always add images to articles when we can.   Will Beback  talk  04:55, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

"While we certainly don't want to offend anyone unnecessarily" -- wrong. The current state of the Muhammad article, after archives and archives full of discussions, proves that Wikipedia, as a community, goes to great lengths in order to find rationalisations for deliberately offending Muslims unnecessarily. Hans Adler 12:05, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Individual editors may make such arguments, but I don't think it's policy to either offend or avoid offending Muslims. Unfortunately, it seems that this issue has become polarized between editors who insist we cannot include any images, and those who say we should include all available images. Less dogmatism on all sides would help bring this to a reasonable compromise.   Will Beback  talk  04:55, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

No one here or anywhere else on the project in the current discussions has argued we can't include any images, and no one has argued for inclusion of all available images. The argument, at its best, is quite nuanced. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 05:15, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Which images of Muhammad does Ludwig2 support including in the article?   Will Beback  talk  05:24, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Any image that actually adds relevant information, such as in a section on depictions of Muhammad, which most (all?) editors at Talk:Muhammad/images agree would be a useful section. The article had such a section a few years ago but it was deleted without discussion. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 08:10, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

So are we proposing restoring that section?   Will Beback  talk  08:26, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Yep. Here. But we're all a bit distracted by various dramas. It will happen when things have settled down again. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 11:36, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

For the other readers here I would just like to highlight the statement above, i.e. " goes to great lengths to deliberately offending Muslims unnecessarily", which is a lie. We have a very small handful editors who are opposed to images in the Muhammad article, and of those only 2, Ludwigs2 and Hans Adler, who go these lengths to explicitly denigrate and assume bad faith of those who wish to retain images in the article. This behavior needs to be excised from the conversation. Tarc (talk) 12:33, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Tarc, your manner of engaging others in discussion at Wikipedia should preclude you from being taken seriously whenever you ask for another editor to be excised from the conversation based on their behavior. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 12:36, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

The difference, Griswaldo, is that I do not imply that those that I disagree with are basing their opinions on racist or ethnic hatred, as Adler and Ludwigs have done on numerous occasions. Tarc (talk) 15:30, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

(ec)I could easily believe that. Certainly in this issue people are going to great lengths and making some of the most ignorant arguments I've yet seen on Wikipedia in order to keep an entry in a state that offends Muslims. Where are the expert editors on this issue I wonder? I'm no expert in Islam but I do teach religious studies courses, including large survey courses on Western religion, and I can tell you from my experience that these images are basically fringe within educational resources, and within the tradition as far as I know it.Griswaldo (talk) 12:34, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Hans, it's not so much about offending Muslims, it's about pampering Christians. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 12:48, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I've long had this uncomfortable feeling that the somewhat undue number of images on that page are not really about WP:NOTCENSORED and are really more of an inherent POV bias amongst the editor community; or rather, it is about resisting the idea of removing the images because we find the concept nonsensical or strange rather than rationally considering the neutral line. The argument above r.e. historical depiction of Muhammed largely centering around non-visual imagery is quite persuasive. --Errant ^(chat!) 13:10, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Non-visual imagery? --FormerIP (talk) 13:13, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

he means non-representative/abstract, of course. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 13:17, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I was going to link to a definition of imagery :-) (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 13:21, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

OK, well I don't think either interpretation makes for a good argument. If it is the case that Mohammed was often described in prose but there are few visual representations of him, then that would make him like Julius Caesar or William Shakespeare. If it is the case that there are two traditions, one which depicts Mohammed's image and one which replaces it with an abstract image, then surely that some something that it would be informative to illustrate in our article by showing examples from each tradition. --FormerIP (talk) 15:03, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Seb: I'm pushing for treating all such articles equally (and I believe the list I posted as the first comment here[8] attests to that) - but of course doing so will upset a ton of editors and leave an unbalanced situation (remove images from Muhammad on those grounds, ignore such policy (if interpreted that way or rewritten that way) for all the ones I listed.

Griswaldo: read the title of this thread. For some editors (some of the most vocal on that talk page), it *is* religious objections fueling their actions. That is notable by the "Policy Whack-A-Mole" game they are playing and numerous end runs around ongoing resolution processes. As one for instance, Ludwigs2 proposed we start an RfC. We all were working on one. The current RfC was proposed and many of us were against it. We've moved on to other proposals that are gaining a lot more support. Then it's end run time again. Instead of continuing in our discussions, he uses AN/I as an excuse not to and enters the RfC that so many of us were opposed to because of its bias (such as implying as fact that the images have no value, which attempts a bias at the outcome. Such as not listing a decent sampling of the articles that would be affected by such a change). It is actions such as that, disruption (which has caused me to have to restart the RfC discussions FOUR times now) and attacks (NUMEROUS, diffs to a dozen at ANI) that have warranted the ANI topic ban proposal you object to - it is NOT his opinion that caused that - it is his ACTIONS.

Errant: I'm working on some digging to support addressing the balance/bias issue on those images. Hopefully it will work. I am currently exploring (at the same time) Jayen's angle, as well as Mathsci's angle (both of which are diametrically opposed). I am also working on yet another RfC proposal for that page which may actually gain a lot more support (but we'll see). Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 16:28, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Islamic religious art is fundamentally different from other traditions of religious art. This is from the Encyclopaedia Britannica article on Islamic Arts: "For practical purposes, representations are not found in religious art, although matters are quite different in secular art. Instead there occurred very soon a replacement of imagery with calligraphy and the concomitant transformation of calligraphy into a major artistic medium." Macropaedia, Vol. 22, p. 76. We are showing typical religious art in the article on Jesus, but we are not showing typical religious art in the article on Muhammad. --JN466 16:44, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

• I'm beginning to realize there is a big difference between the two. For instance, I would posit, accuracy of the portrayals or not, various of the images at Jesus can be considered both secular and religious. There does not seem to be a divide between them. On Muhammad, there is a distinct difference. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 17:08, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Do you think a painting of Jesus could ever be truly secular? Images of Jesus, crucifixes etc. are pervasive in Christian culture (just as Islamic abstract religious motifs are in Islamic culture), but I don't think that makes them secular. They are just expressions of a religious culture. Cheers, --JN466 17:22, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm aware of that. Let me clarify. Many of the images of Jesus seem to be accepted both on a secular aspect and a religious aspect. The same is not true of images of Muhammad. I'm not claiming they are secular. I'm claiming there's an acceptance of them on both sides. While, as you have pointed out, may not be true for depictions of Muhammad. Hope that clarifies things. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 17:27, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

• There is a somewhat related RfC at Wikipedia_talk:What_Wikipedia_is_not#RfC_on_NOTCENSORED on whether NOTCENSORED "protects" incidental material. --JN466 16:52, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Responses to several comments above: "on what basis do you assume that Westerners are so driven by a desire for 'images' that they are incapable of understanding why others have a different opinion?" (AndyTheGrump) - on what basis do you assume that people who support retaining the images make that assumption? I would wager that every single one of us understands that a majority of Muslims have a different opinion. That is why tools like the explanation on how to disable the display of such images for people who are offended exist. (which responds to VsevolodKrolikov's argument of an opt-in tool: That would be a dramatically bad idea, placing the default position of Wikipedia to be censored. Even the proposed image filter was designed to be opt-out, and this article's treatment should be no different.) It is also why images are pushed to the bottom of the article, rather than spread throughout. Actions have been taken in the light of Muslim opposition. But we can only go so far without censoring the article for religious reasons.

On "minority position" of images. Including the various template headers, there are actually 22 images on this article. Only six are a depiction of or including Muhammad. Richard I of England, as an example, 8 of 12 images include depictions of Richard. In George Washington, 12 of 17. Pope John XXIII, 4 of 4. Lester B. Pearson, 7 of 10. Adi Da, 5 of 9. On our well developed historical bios, images of the subject typically occupy a majority position. On Muhammad, such images occupy a minority position. Numerous compromises have been made on this article in deference to Muslim tradition and viewpoints. It is, however, obvious that compromise is not what the opponents are interested in. They want the only options to be "none or none". It is time that such people accept the compromises that were already reached. Resolute 20:29, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Resolute, what you're basically saying is that common sense and simple courtesy are a form of censorship. I'm sorry, but that perspective is bizarre - asserting that no one's feelings or interests should be allowed to get in the way of what you want to do is too close to sociopathy for me to be comfortable with. Are you incapable of distinguishing between necessary and unnecessary offense? --Ludwigs2 22:34, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

That you disagree with my assessment does not lend validity to your personal insults. I respect that this is obviously a very personal debate for you, but you will have to respect that I disagree with you. To repeat myself, the community has already compromised on this issue in numerous ways: The ratio of images depicting the subject to overall images is far lower than one would expect given both the size of the article and the images we have available. The images have been placed in a minority position on the article, "below the fold", so to speak, rather than being spread throughout, as is typical of most such articles. Of note, the use of calligraphy rather than an image in the infobox. Something which is unique on biographical articles. An image of Muhammad in hell was removed, even though there is a very good argument that it was an accurate depiction of traditional western views, on the basis that it was felt to be unnecessarily provocative. And finally, special code has been created that logged in users can add to their profiles so as to hide the images, something that is very much a special case on Wikipedia. All of these compromises have been made in respect for the "feelings and interests" of those who might be offended. We have compromised on many occasions. That you will not acknowledge this, choosing instead to resort to repeated accusations of bigotry or sociopathy on the part of those with whom you disagree says all we need to know about your motives. I do not favour censorship, and from that position I will not budge. Resolute 22:53, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Resolute: the only thing 'personal' about this debate is that people (like you) keep talking crap about me, which is not something I can do anything about. otherwise this is all about reason and common sense for me. Your argument now seems to be: "Everyone should be happy that we're only offending people half as much as we could," which is not really a sensible position to take. I don't care how much we could be offending people; I simply want to know that we have a good reason for offending people if that's what we're going to do.

This is really where you've gone wrong all along: rather than demonstrating what value the images have, you try to bargain to keep images I consider worthless and provocative. show they have worth, and the discussion is, but if you can't show they have worth then don't haggle over how much shit we're need to have in our sandwich.

And I'm sorry that you consider all this a personal attack. You are not using ethical reasoning - that is a demonstrable fact - and I reserve the right to point it out. if you don't like it, be ethical. --Ludwigs2 23:34, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Actually, where you keep going wrong is where others have to prove to you that the images are valid and useful in the article. You don't have the right to demand that a particular article have extra hoops to jump through, if the justification for the extra hoop are vague hand-waves at some group's religious sensibilities. No one is going to bend backwards to prove or justify something when you don't really have a call to request such a thing in the first place, Ludwigs. Tarc (talk) 00:58, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

My argument is the same as it always has been: that removing the images for the reasons you champion is nothing more than religious censorship. I explained the ways in which we have compromised to show that we who prefer the retention of the images have acted in good faith in this debate. That you will not even acknowledge this reveals only the fact that you will not reciprocate. Resolute 02:43, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

actually, Resolute, it's you making the double standard here. on every article except muhammad editors can consider the value of an image and remove it if if it fails the test. but I'm sure you'll avoid this as you avoid every other rational point I make - lol. --Ludwigs2 03:12, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

If I did not find value in the images, I would not be arguing in support of them. I judge these images exactly the same as I do any other article. The problem is that you move the goalposts on images you don't like. I am under no obligation to meet your personal standards. Resolute 03:45, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

And since this is Jimbo's talk page, I will mention a comment he made regarding the image filter that also applies here: Allowing the end user control over what they see will allow greater freedom to the end user, not less.. That is my position: allow the end user to choose. Don't presume to make the choice for me. Resolute 03:49, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Good. So put Piss Christ on the Jesus page. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 03:54, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Straw man argument. You are confusing images for which the offence is incidental with images for which provocation is deliberate. Piss Christ is not on the Jesus article for the same reasons the Danish cartoons are not on the Muhammad article. Resolute 04:09, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Wrong. It's not on there because that is not how Jesus is usually depicted. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 04:11, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Actually, he's quite correct. Piss Christ and the Danish cartoons were both created with the deliberate intention of raising people's hackles, not to depict the subject in a meaningful way, which is why it's not used there. The pictures of Muhammad in the article were not; they were created (with one exception) by Muslims for Muslim audiences. Others have already stated what they add to the article, so I won't repeat that here; however, I'll say that I certainly found it quite useful when reading the article a few years ago, before I began editing here. So you have definitive proof that a reader of the encyclopedia found them useful. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:35, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Please take the pictures off. They do not help us understand the topic of the article. Borock (talk) 01:48, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Would you say the same of the images at Richard I of England? Resolute 02:43, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

According to WP:IUP, images should be (a) relevant (connected with and important to what is being discussed) and (b) increase readers' understanding of the subject matter. All the images of Richard, except for the first, were painted long after his lifetime, and so, like all the images of Muhammad, though they are connected with it, they tell us nothing important about the subject. So, per IUP, they don't belong in the article. But this does not reflect practice on the project. Such images abound and they are vehemently defended. I defy anyone to remove those uninformative images from Richard I.

This disjunction between policy and practice is at the root of the problem at Muhammad. Resolute has just used the argument, We do it on Richard I (and everywhere else), why shouldn't we do it on Muhammad? The answer, of course, is Because it creates offense and adds nothing important to the readers' understanding.

We have more options than (a) strip all irrelevant images out of the encyclopedia or (b) host controversial images that add nothing important to the readers' understanding. Editors argue that to treat controversial (sexual, violent, sacred) images differently in this way, excluding irrelevant controversial images while we include irrelevant noncontroversial images, is a breach of the first amendment, or WP:NOTCENSORED or something. I see it as simply being sensible and exercising good manners. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 04:23, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

"[I]t creates offense and adds nothing important to the readers' understanding". The first part is true. The second point is questionable - in fact, images of Muhammad may actually detract from an understanding of Islam. Given the deeply-held beliefs that such images are inappropriate, an absence of such images should lead the reader to ask why they aren't there - which in turn should lead to deeper understanding. Of course, if the only purpose of an article on Islam is to compare it to 'the default: Christianity', which seems to be the argument of some here, such subtleties are unnecessary. AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:53, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

The Islamic visual tradition is simply different, and we're betraying ignorance by not reflecting that. I've added some examples of Islamic art describing Muhammad's physical appearance above. --JN466 07:58, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

What you are all saying is exactly right IMO. I think I've seen Jayen argue elsewhere that images need to be put to the same content policies that governs written information NPOV, DUE, etc. That is exactly the issue here. By providing visual information about a figure who is known 99.999% of the time without such visual information we are actually creating a distorted perception of that figure. It is, as Andy says, detracting from an understanding of [Muhammad]. Put another way I would say that when it comes to understanding Muhammad what we are currently doing is phenomenologically disingenuous. If we compare Jesus or Buddha, we have religious figures the historical perceptions of which have actually been significantly influenced by traditions of physical depiction. That is not the case for Muhammad. So providing that visual information is WP:UNDUE, as well as being offensive.Griswaldo (talk) 13:06, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Anthony - you touch on what was exactly my point above in your final paragraph. Yes, we have more options than to strip all images (that you view them as unimportant is only your opinion) or to host all (again, your opinion on value is only your POV). And that is exactly what has been done with this article. Editorially, we have restricted the number and location of images, placing them in a minority position. We have ensured that the images that are there were not drawn to be provocative. We have offered tools so that those who wish to hide images can do so. When (because we all know the Foundation will force it through) the image filter comes online, another option will be added. This article is atypical in numerous ways, all designed to mitigate the level of offence. But we cannot eliminate all of it. Wikipedia even warns you of this fact. It is out of respect for those who are unable to look at this article with anything but a religious POV that we have taken these steps. I support this, even though my preference would be to treat it exactly as we would any other historical topic. Especially one for which we have so many images. Wikipedia is not an Islamic project, and this is not an Islamic article. This is a biographical article about a historical individual. And IMNSHO, viewing it in any other way is an admission that one has lost NPOV. Resolute 15:35, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I have to agree with Ludwigs' sandwich metaphor here. The crux of this is the relevance of the images; that is, their connection with the topic and importance to exposition. An image or images of Muhammad will be mandatory in a section discussing depictions of Muhammad. No one has argued against that. What I'm asking you to do is recognize those images have little or no importance to the remainder of the article and can easily be replaced by images of similar or greater didactic value (such as the kinds of images Jayen is suggesting above), acknowledge they're offensive to many readers, recognize just how rude and ignorant it makes us look to gratuitously load up the article with offensive images, and agree that the better option is to use the alternative images. :)

(Do you think we should move this to another venue?) --Anthonyhcole (talk) 16:37, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm an atheist. I could be demanding that all religious images be struck from Wikipedia, as they represent fictional characters. However, I don't make such a demand 'cuz I don't believe in censurship. If a group of people (no matter what religion they are) are upset about images? TOO BAD about them. GoodDay (talk) 17:26, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I have a thought on that, Anthony, but have to run for most of the afternoon - don't let me forget to answer. And yeah, a different forum might be more ideal, either back on the image talk page, or perhaps one of our user talk pages, perhaps to try and reduce the number of players in the discussion. Resolute 17:36, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I look forward to it. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 17:41, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Anthony (and in general, related to his comment), when you said above "All the images of Richard, except for the first, were painted long after his lifetime, and so, like all the images of Muhammad[...]" - which brings me back to my earlier point. I simply ask for a uniform application of policy. Take 'em all down everywhere... leave 'em all up everywhere (solely discussing the specific types of images you mentioned). No special case articles. That, sadly, as a "for instance" in the "leave 'em all up" camp, means depictions of historical events that would allow our readers to understand what is going on from the depictions. Alas, the images proposed above do no such thing. And on the other side of the coin ("Take 'em all down everywhere"), we know that will run into massive objections. Brings up an interesting question: let's assume the rationale for removal is correct and supported by policies... which is the correct route? (a) making a singular special case exception to the way it is being applied, (b) leaving the article to match the way it is applied everywhere else, or (c) proposing a question to the community asking whether current application on (list of NUMEROUS articles - not just one) is a proper interpretation of policies (and of course, from (c) one of two other directions will result: (1) remove all such images Wikipedia-wide, or (2) change policy to be clear and in support of the way it is being applied across most of Wikipedia). Anyway, those are my thoughts. Side note, I've been compiling each POV on this issue with points and counterpoints - I'll send you and Reso a note later (please remind me if I forget - got rather busy at work yesterday, and I'm a bit behind on what I wanted to do on here). Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 18:07, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Re: "I've been compiling each POV on this issue with points and counterpoints", add this: Wikipedia should treat a request that Muhammad's image not be shown exactly the same way we would treat a request by a Christian that Wikipedia be shut down on Sundays. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:25, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

BAD example. I'd support such a request, even in contravention to policy. I'd at least have one full day spent IRL. On a serious note, I'll work such in. Best, Rob ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 20:05, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

• I hope Griswaldo and the others will be taking steps to make the same complaints about insulting Muslims on the Farsi Wikipedia, whose featured article on Muhammad has 5 images of him, compared to our six (several are the same). Do let me know where the party is going next. Johnbod (talk) 21:41, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

• I don't read, write, or understand Farsi so it's rather doubtful that I know anything about what is on their Wiki, what type of consensus it has, or anything else about the matter. Of course most of the Muslim world are by no means Farsi speakers. I would assume that most of the denizens of the Farsi Wiki are Iranian, and hence most likely not Sunni, which makes a difference when discussing contemporary offense to these images. How many images of Muhammad are there on the Arabic Wiki John? That said, I'm curious why you singled me out, since my arguments have not really been about offense but about DUE weight and accuracy in the historical perception of Muhammad. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 21:52, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

You were the one who called such images "fringe" above - if you are concerned about insulting Muslims you should be more careful. The Arabic article has no images of Muhammad, though two other images from (you would say) "fringe" manuscripts that do contain them. Johnbod (talk) 22:07, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

What on earth does "fringe" have to do with offensiveness? Nothing at all. It simply means way outside of the mainstream. So I really have no idea what to make of your statement here.Griswaldo (talk) 22:11, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

• From my Google Translate-based understanding of past discussions on fa.wp, the consensus view there seems to be that excluding images of Mohammed would mean ignoring an important aspect of Musllim cultural history. It should be kept in mind that most editors there will be Shia and have a less conservative attitude on this particular question, as you indicate. --FormerIP (talk) 22:00, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

  And Iranians of Persian descent meaning that many of these depictions are more culturally salient to them as well. Also, keep in mind that a Farsi speaker isn't necessarily a Muslim either, particularly if said Farsi speaker lives in the West. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 22:02, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

  It's not a case of being "conservative" in Iran - conservative traditions there mostly favour images. But one should be careful to avoid a false Sunni/Shia dichotomy here - most surviving miniatures with depictions of Mahammad were commissioned by Sunnis, mostly in Turkey. Johnbod (talk) 22:07, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I mean now, rather than historically, Johnbod. It's undoubtedly the case that the average Sunni has a more conservative attitude on this question that the average Shia. That's a true dichotomy, really.

One of the things that strikes me about these discussions is that a lot of editors opposing the images do so on the basis that they know what Muslims think about it. en.wp has Muslim editors, but none seem to have made themselves known on this topic.

I wonder how much the deletionist position is based on a stereotype of Muslims as universally hardline and inflexible. Although I wouldn't like to predict percentages, I think Muslims are capable of a lot more creative thought and less homogeneity than they are being given credit for and that, actually, the views of Muslims about this may be quite diverse. --FormerIP (talk) 22:41, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

• There is nothing inherent in Islam that prohibits pictures of Muhammad. This is a particular interpretation by some Islamic scholars. It's like saying that Christianity doesn't accept use of contraceptives. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 23:15, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

  OK but who are you arguing with? I don't know that anyone has made that argument. The issue is what has been mainstream in practice, both within Islam and within the academy (for different reasons) when it comes to presenting knowledge about Muhammad, which is what we're trying to do in our entry. I think you'll find both traditions, the religious and academic, not basing building perceptions of Muhammad based on fringe traditions of Islamic art. That's the issue. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 23:21, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Why are you talking about this here? This is not an appropriate place to discuss this. How is this an appropriate place to discuss this? Go talk about it elsewhere, like maybe the Muhammad:Talk or some such. Chrisrus (talk) 23:53, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

It may be a somewhat random place, but I think Jimbo generally takes the view that people can discuss what they like on his talkpage.--FormerIP (talk) 00:07, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, I originally asked Jimbo a question about how we could get muslims involved in these debates. I am still open to ideas on how to do that. Muslims represent about 20% of humanity; yet I don't see them involved here (apologies if anyone who has posted above is, unbeknownst to me, muslim). We seem to have a very large proportion of all the figurative images of Muhammad that can be found online in Commons, but there is a comparative dearth of Islamic calligraphy. We did not have a single hilya until yesterday. For a project aimed at all of humanity, and hoping to compile the entirety of human knowledge, that is troubling. I wonder if muslims have voted with their feet. --JN466 00:17, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

You may have a point about images in Commons, Jayen, but that would be an issue for Commons. I expect they would suggest you upload something. I don't know why Muslims have stayed away from the discussion. I would hesitate before saying they have "voted with their feet", but that would surely mean that they feel a lot of fuss is being made about nothing. --FormerIP (talk) 00:42, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it really matters whether we have 1 Muslim commenting or 50, to be honest. I'd rather have people who are simply competent partake in such discussions, regardless of their ethnic background. This reminds me of the Daily Show when they have the "Senior Black Correspondent" on to opine about a black-related topic, a satire of the notion that one needs a black person's opinion to legitimize the discussion. Tarc (talk) 01:19, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

I basically agree, but I think it is interesting all the same that we have multiple heated discussions going on, conducted by non-Muslims, about what should or shouldn't be done on behalf of Muslims. --FormerIP (talk) 01:38, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

That is an interesting angle, yea. Reminds me of when male politicians decide abortion laws. Tarc (talk) 02:23, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the article on Muhammad in the Farsi (Persian) Wikipedia, which is a featured article, has a number of images of the prophet.[9] Maybe no one has told them that they're supposed to be offended.   Will Beback  talk  00:32, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

It is not surprising that the Farsi article would feature Persian miniatures, because they're, well, Persian, and Iran, as a Shiite country, has a tolerant attitude to depictions of Muhammad. FWIW, the Turkish article contains no such pictures, despite the fact that Turkey is a secular society and Iran is not. Neither does the Arabic one of course, which is beautifully illustrated by the way, and features a lot of relevant imagery we don't show. --JN466 05:08, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

So it's an oversimplification to say that "all Muslims are offended by these images". Perhaps it'd be more accurate to say that some Sunni Muslims are offended by them, though even that seems to be an assumption rather than a reflection of the responses of actual Muslim editors or readers. Fundamentalist adherents to various religions are offended by all kinds of things, I suspect.   Will Beback  talk  03:20, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Oh, pish tosh Will. it's a fundamental aspect of their faith, outlined in the Hadith. You might as well say that it's just an 'assumption' that Christians dislike people pissing on the Cross. This is another effort to avoid the debate by demonizing the opposition. --Ludwigs2 03:28, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

I've don't nothing to "demonize" the opposition. I don't see anyone here as an opponent. I'm simply pointing out that the Farsi-language article, presumably written by Muslims or people well-informed of Muslim beliefs, contains several images of the Prophet, and that therefore the assumption that all Muslims are offended by such images is probably incorrect. More generally, I do not think that Wikipedia articles should be tailored with the primary purpose of avoiding offense to religious fundamentalists of any faith, simply because they may take offense at so many different things that trying to avoid all of them would significantly impact our ability to write an inclusive encyclopedia.   Will Beback  talk  21:03, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Will, you started from an objection to the phrase "all Muslims are offended by these images" (a statement which - true or false - is based in a generally accepted precept of the faith). You changed 'all Muslims' to 'Sunni Muslims', then minimized that by calling it an assumption, then minimized it again by asserting that it's 'fundamentalist adherents' and suggesting they are all easily offended. That is textbook demonization. You may not have meant it to be, but that is what you did. As I have said repeated to people in this dispute, if you cannot make any argument except the people complaining aren't worth listening to then you are making an ad hominem argument, not a rational one. --Ludwigs2 12:12, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

To say that it is a "fundamental aspect of their faith" is such a fundamentally incorrect over-simplification of the situation that I begin to question if you really understand what you purportedly defend. It seems like your understanding derives from listening to the protesters of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, with a dash of "I skimmed the Islam article a bit". Tarc (talk) 03:50, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I can see how it would seem that way to you. --Ludwigs2 04:35, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't agree with your reasoning as to why this is an appropriate place to discuss this. You say it's appropriate because you are inviting Jimbo to discuss with you ways of increasing the amount of Moslem Wikipedians. Why wouldn't Wikipedia:ISLAM be a better place for that? Besides, this is not what you are talking about here. The topic of discussion is ways to improve the article Muhammad, so this should go to that article's discussion page; you are discussing ways to improve that article, so you should discuss that with the editors of that article there where they discuss that topic. The people who will decide whether and which pictures to use for particular articles are the editors of those articles and not Jimbo. He would not be allowed to remove the pictures against concensous anyway. He has nothing to do with that decision because he doesn't edit that article. The people who will decide that are the edtors of that article and the place to talk about it is there. You seem to believe that he's in control of this project and could just remove pictures against the editors wishes, but he couldn't if he tried. If he started doing that, we'd all just move to a mirror site and the project would go on without him. He doesn't have the power to remove the pictures, so your reasoning for why this is an appropriate place to be discussing this is off base. Chrisrus (talk) 05:49, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

what a great case study in the problems of Wikipedia

I'm going to point out (again) the bizarre and dysfunctional nature of this dispute. Note that:

• The volume of text spilled over this on various pages is easily 40 times the length of the article on Muhammad (and that's not counting the 16 archived pages, which would bump it - I estimate - to something like 200 to 300 times the size of the article)
• Almost none of the material discussed in this huge volume of text is represented in the text of the article (everything above about the Persians, for instance, is absent - the article only contains a handful of references to Persia, and they are all military in nature)
• Nowhere in this huge volume of text does anyone give any real reason for including these images, except oblique references to art-historical traditions (that are also not mentioned in the article, save one reference to Ottoman calligraphy styles)

Not only do the images offend Muslims (which I think everyone agrees to, though some argue that doesn't matter), but the discussion offends common sense. What are we really squabbling over here? the retention of images that are unrelated to the text? Why are we fighting over that?

What's happened here is that some editors have recognized a particular and real threat against the project - censorship by religious groups trying to enforce their particular worldview - and reacted to it in an extreme and uncompromising manner. They are insisting that these images remain on the article solely and precisely because they are offensive - not because they want to offend, mind you, but because they are engrossed in battling censorship and have lost the ability to discriminate censorship from normal editing. Nor is this problem restricted to this article (you can see it play out in multiple areas of the project: fringe articles, political articles, cult-related articles). It's depressing.

I'm tempted to say we should just scrap this discussion and start a new debate on how to encourage/enforce common sense on project. As things stand, discussions on any controversial subject end up falling down this same Carrollesque rabbit-hole, where every point is warped to the service of some idée fixe, and most participants are more concerned with chopping off the heads of their opponents than making any collaborative effort. It's dumb.

But, I suspect such a new debate will make even less progress than this one. C'est la vie... --Ludwigs2 18:19, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

It is a shame that an editor is allowed to lie...and lie and lie and lie again...about others with whom he disagrees. In all the forums and all the discussions that this topic has sprawled across in the last few weeks, I do not recall a single editor who stood up and said "I want to keep these images solely and precisely because they are offensive" (italics are Ludwigs2' words). He couches the above in pretty "I didn't mean to..." verbiage, but this line has been repeated often enough elsewhere that the meaning is clear; we're all a bunch of Muslim-hating bigots who use the Muhammad article as our personal Everybody Draw Mohammed Day platform, to actively humiliate and denigrate a group of people. In this fantasy, Ludwigs2 is the sole defender of decency and morality, battling us with both hands tied behind his back, blindfolded, pants on fire, while dangling from one toenail from a cliff. I hope the end is in sight to these drawn-out debates, as defending oneself from one who so freely and cavalierly misrepresents others' opinions is getting tiring. Tarc (talk) 01:07, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, with respect, he didn't call you or anyone else a Muslim-hating bigot. He said that his opponents are doing what they are doing "not because they want to offend, mind you, but because they are engrossed in battling censorship and have lost the ability to discriminate censorship from normal editing". If you translate that into "Muslim-hating bigots" out "to humiliate and denigrate a group of people", because that's what you hear him as really saying, then that's precisely what you accuse him of doing. It's probably best if both sides take each other at their actual words, rather than leaping to conclusions. Cheers. --JN466 01:24, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Jayen, not in those specific words. Instead, he's used terms such as "(we who object have) deep-seated anti-Islamic prejudice"[10], implies we are being racist.[11], states our rationale is "entrenched in racism",[12] implies other editors are acting unethically by not applying ethical reasoning[13] and so on. Don't want to fill the page with tons of diffs, but I can provide them to you on your or my talk page if you would like. So, I'd say, when you combine the few dozen such statements about other editors, it seems he is indeed calling us that. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 21:43, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Ridiculous...--Ludwigs2 22:23, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree, such conduct truly is - yet not a single apology has been forthcoming from you. :-/ Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 00:02, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

lol - even more ridiculous… --Ludwigs2 00:16, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I have been reading these words for 3-ish weeks now, and know precisely what is meant. Diffs can be provided if you like, though I'm sure most can be found in the ANI thread regarding Ludwigs' topic ban. Tarc (talk) 02:08, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Template:Nono --Ludwigs2 02:35, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Despite the fact that you've made reference to one of my very favorite books that final jab doesn't help ratchet down the tension. A bit more self-restraint from all concerned would be really good. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 02:42, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

yes, you're absolutely correct. I'll strike it. it's my worst flaw - I just can't control my tongue. --Ludwigs2 02:47, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

The argument that the images aren't useful except to offend Muslims is absurd on several levels. First, not all Muslims will be offended. Second, the majority of the world isn't Muslim, thus rendering the overall argument questionable and hampering the ability to inform all people interested in the topic who are not offended by these images. Third, not all Muslims read English, have an internet connection or can access English wikipedia through filters and censorship and thus can not be offended by viewing the images. Fourth, there is now an option such that any reader can hide these images if desired. Sixth, this assumes, quite insultingly, that Muslims are so zealous and unreasonable that they would object to nonbelievers viewing historical images as part of an educational work. Seventh, unlike images of suffering, violence, sexuality or nudity, for which there are cultural taboos or an inherent disgust, offense or emotional harm at the sight of an image of a person is a learned, and strongly culturally-bound phenomenon. It is not comparable to images of pornography, torture, dead bodies or illness.

As for the specific idea that the images are not educational or useful beyond insult, this is also absurd. First, the images can be used to demonstrate different depictions of Muhammad in different cultures, time periods and artistic traditions - including the tradition of Western art as practiced by non Muslims. That is the most obvious use for images, in particular those coming from different Islamic traditions. Second, it has been argued that the images demonstrate nothing educational because they are not truly pictures of Muhammad, only artistic impressions or ideas of him, therefore there is no reason to include them. This argument is also invalid. To start, this argument would prohibit the use of any artistic image of any historical figure before photography on any wikipedia page since none are "really" the page's subject. Indeed, this would prohibit the use of any images, period, since the image itself is not the "thing" itself (see The Treachery of Images). No pictures of fruit, the Pyramids, shoes, buildings, etc. because none are equivalent to being in the actual presence of the object. Images are never "things", but still serve to illustrate the subject. They give context within the artistic (and hence cultural) tradition within which they were created, but also break up a monotony of text (incredibly useful) and capture in a small space the literary tradition of the "thing" being depicted - such as who was believed to be present and the location where the event occurred. Images exist throughout the world, in all cultures, at all times, because they are illustrative even if they are not exact. Merely because an image does not exactly represent a specific event is not a reason to remove it from any page.

There is no reason to suspect that the images on Muhammad exist solely to give offense. There is no reason to believe that all readers, or even all Muslim readers, would take offense. There is no reason to believe the images of Muhammad on Muhammad are any less educational or informative than they are on any other page. There is every reason to apply the same standards on Muhammad as we apply on every other page - insist the images are relevant, carefully selected and appropriately placed. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 15:59, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry to be a pain but you went from fourth to sixth. Tivanir2 (talk) 20:31, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Edited my last post to move it to the right spot. Tivanir2 (talk) 20:33, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Has what occurred what you want for Wikipedia?

Please check to see if the treatment over Joe Faust and related articles each are what you want for Wikipedia. Thank you for your moment, Jimmy. Joefaust (talk) 15:36, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean. Can you be more specific?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:17, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Jimbo. I was bullied in PGForum and then followed by the two into Wikipedia recently; in the efforts on Paragliding and on possible disambiguation of Paraglider, the Triangle control frame article was fully deleted and I was topic banned over hang gliding and paragliding. My politeness, on-topic effort seemed to only bring ire. Is the reduction that has occurred your wish? The broad work for years for Wikipedia seemed to vanish and be counted as naught. Joefaust (talk) 16:51, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

For convenience, the relevant ANI thread. Looie496 (talk) 00:50, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

• Part of the concern seems to be the unusual style of wording in text written by User:Joefaust and the notability level of parts of paraglider equipment, plus concerns of WP:COI in promoting certain ideas in articles. Meanwhile, there are too few copy-editor people willing to rewrite and adjust text for mainstream English word-flow, and so authors with unusual text-phrasing are met with resistance. In articles about towns in India, I try to rewrite awkward phrases (such as "Is this the problem you be having"), but I understand how many people have little patience for unusual phrasing and that could contribute to a topic-ban for some users. Some authors should perhaps slow down, take time to reword phrases, check facts, and make fewer edits to some articles. People who write very quick, but awkward posts, with numerous errors or incorrect links, can cause frustrations for other editors who feel too busy to handle those issues. Slow down and write more carefully. I hope all that makes sense. -Wikid77 (talk) 02:44, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Financing of Wikipedia

Hello Mr Wales,

This question is a little private, but I am curious. Should you prefer to answer somewhere else than on Wikipedia, please feel free to email me at pierre (at) pierrepaquette (dot) net.

I am always happy to send my financial contribution to Wikipedia each year around this time of the year, when we see the appeals to send some money to finance Wikipedia. As I am not rich, I do not contribute much, but it comes from the heart. Should I ever be able to afford a larger contribution, I will be happy to add a few zeroes to the amount!

However, I was wondering about the contributions of the owners and staff of Wikipedia. Can you please inform me about that?

Best regards, CielProfond (talk) 02:30, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't have owners. It is owned by the Wikimedia Foundation, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation whose highest authority is the Board of Directors, who are not the owners and who are not compensated for their work. The Board has a tradition that everyone contributes, but specific donor amounts are generally kept private at the option of the donor. You'll probably find this an interesting read.

Similarly, for staff contributions, I'm sure many of them do donate, but I don't know how much.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:18, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Hello Jimbo, I like the tone of your appeal of this years. It's less "Give 5$ or the knowledge of humanity will collapse !¡1!" and more "give 5$ so we can keep it free of publicity and such". It's factual, accurate... Really more in the tone of wikipedia than what I saw in the past few years. It might not be as much appealing, but at least it's much more coherent with the beliefs you pretend to protect. Thanks for all. Iluvalar (talk) 20:14, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

"Pretend"? Is there any particular reason you are being rude to me?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:44, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Jimmy, I doubt he meant to offend. He most likely meant to say 'intend to protect' or 'claim to protect'. English is not his first language - see User:Iluvalar. Now go enjoy the rest of your day. :-) 75.59.227.116 (talk) 18:30, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Just FYI

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Oxfordian_Theory_%E2%80%93_Parallels_with_Shakespeare%27s_Plays#Love.27s_Labours_Lost.

Apparently I had been banned but did not know it. I appreciate your interest in noticing what has been reverted from the page. Nishidani stated that those who objected to the merger should contribute to the page, so I did so. Then I was told that I had been banned and could not do so, and Tom Reedy reverted what I had written. I have resupplied the reverted content to the talk page under the assumption that I am still allowed to talk although I am not allowed to edit. I hope this assumption was correct, as I am not trying to be completely banned. I am, however, trying to stand for some principle. The miscarriage of comprehension is deep in this instance. Thank you for your consideration. --BenJonson (talk) 05:02, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

The original notice was pretty clear: User talk:BenJonson#Topic ban

...you are hereby banned indefinitely from all articles, discussions, and other content related to the Shakespeare authorship question, William Shakespeare, or Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, broadly construed across all namespaces. You may appeal this topic ban as provided in Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions#Appeal.

There was also a discussion at User talk:Nikkimaria#Requesting Status on "Ban". Johnuniq (talk) 07:58, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

It also seems difficult to claim ignorance of his topic ban when he posted at the enforcement proceedings. A deep miscarriage of comprehension? Tom Reedy (talk) 16:03, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

But, Tom, am I banned from mentioning or discussing this ban on Jimbo Wales' talk page?--BenJonson (talk) 17:43, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Not unless I ask you to stop. This is a bit of a diplomatic safe haven. I do sometimes ask people to stop talking about some things on this page - some discussions have no point and no end. But in general, I like to make sure that this page is a "safety valve" for discussion of issues that have gotten thorny elsewhere.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:47, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia's Neutrality in Religion?

My understanding of "Neutrality" with respect to religion is that it means Wikipedia should not make any attempt to tell readers of any widespread religious persuasion that their beliefs are correct or incorrect, true or false. "Neutrality" to me means describing their beliefs impartially, using language letting the readers decide what religion to follow if any, instead of trying to decide for them, or worse yet, demonizing them for their beliefs.

Unfortunately there is a certain type of editor attracted to wikipedia that can never be satisfied with this understanding of neutrality. They are never satisfied and strive relentlessly to make wikipedia correspond with their own view of reality or spirituality. There are many competing views of reality in the world (Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism have all had official state approval in various countries, not to mention China's current official view of reality, "Scientific Development Concept") No two religions in the world have the same view of reality or spirituality, and nobody yet to my knowledge has determined to everyone's satisfaction that his own view of reality and spirituality is what everyone else must be forced to subscribe to. It seems trivial to point these facts out, yet again despite the compromise on "Genesis Creation Narrative", leaving this compromise alone could never be good enough for editors who militantly feel that the article title needs to reflect their POV that Genesis is a "MYTH" and they are back now militating to abandon the previous compromise and retitle it "Genesis Creation Myth" to back up their POV.

No other word beside "myth" will ever be acceptable to them, until Wikipedia officially declares that their POV is correct and Genesis is a MYTH, and all other POVs are wrong. Any amount of reliable sources demonstrating that "MYTH" has always been seen as a polemical and prejudiced term when applied to the Quran, Bible, Book of Mormon, or Mahabharata, etc. are summarily dismissed by these bigots. Because in their circular view, only the sources that agree with their POV are correct and reliable, and all sources no matter how prominent, that suggest any other POV might exist on what "myth" means besides their POV, are inadmissible to them, says them. This is the kind of orchestrated anti-religious attack I see on Wikipedia that makes me want to throw up and never use it again. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 11:42, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't see how describing something a myth is necessarily an attack on any system of beliefs: it merely means something held to be true by tradition, but placed in doubt by a philosophy/a science. To say that a traditional narrative is in doubt is accurate: after all, not even the most committed proponents of, say, the Book of Genesis will tell you that everything in there is literal (not if they're reasonable, at least). To say that some points are metaphors or require a special understanding of the text is a recurrent type of argument in religious literature; scientific or philosophical literature tends not to use that kind of justification, simply because it doesn't and cannot operate with belief (or at least shouldn't). "Myth" is another one of those words that have a clear and self-evident purpose, actually resulting from a dialogue between religion and science, and it is hijacked in entrenched communities to make it sound like it's an attack on something (like the word "liberal" or the word "conservative").

It is those communities which proceed to push their (often sciolistic) interpretation on the rest of the world, attempting to reuse an old tactic of the politically correct left of the 1980s and '90s - that is, to pollute words that are at worst stupid until they become offensive buzzwords in the mind of John Q. Public. Whether we are or aren't religious, that kind of sophistry doesn't help anyone make sense of the complexities of the world. Your crusade against the very use of the word "myth" is part of that simplification process, and I hope no one here takes it seriously.

And let me add an essential point that you seem to be missing: the description of ideas as "mythical" can in no way be limited to religion. It has been used by the same scholarly communities to refer to most lay ideologies (notoriously so for fascism and communism), to advertising, to modern (wo)manhood, to life on other planets etc. What this means is that the critical mind, which we all supposedly possess, needs to differentiate between what is certain, what is probable, and what is esoteric. In the public sphere, these need to be distinguished for everybody's benefit, but privately you can believe in whatever you want to believe. From Cthulhu to phrenology, from the Immaculate Conception to From each according to his ability... Regards, Dahn (talk) 12:40, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I can't speak for others, but 'myth' to me implies something about an account not being 'Truth'. This comes across oddly to many people of belief who do not contend that the Genesis story is a historical account. It would be like calling The Rime of the Ancient Mariner a myth - the label just doesn't make sense. Christians will no doubt hold other beliefs about what the story means, in terms of the character of God or humanity, but that is a philosophical/theological point of view not a historical one. Polequant (talk) 15:03, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

The contrast between the dynamics at Talk:Muhammad/images and those at Talk:Genesis creation narrative is striking. On a central article for the topic of Islam we are using numerous culturally inappropriate semi-relevant pictures in spite of significant protest from Muslims, whereas at a somewhat more peripheral article for the topic of Christianity and Judaism we have already censored the title because of fringe sensibilities and are now supposed to censor the lead as well, removing the actual classification of the text. Meanwhile, the Islamic version of the myth remains located at Islamic mythology#Islamic creation belief without any opposition. Looks like a significant pro-Christian, anti-Muslim bias to me. Hans Adler 13:24, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, "culturally inappropriate semi-relevant pictures" is a product of your own opinion, not fact. Second, "significant protests from Muslims" against the Wikipedia's portrayal of Muhammad? Would you care to point out just where this happened? Tarc (talk) 13:34, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Tarc, I think your views on those pictures being anything other than "culturally inappropriate semi-relevant pictures" is the mere opinion here. And if you aren't aware of the ongoing protests against how we handle this issue, you've just not been paying attention. (That doesn't mean the protesters are right, of course, but putting our heads in the sands and pretending that objections don't exist isn't right at all.)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:19, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

The images aren't "culturally inappropriate". They are "inappropriate within a single culture" - and not everyone within that culture (which is never monolithic) can access the images or will be offended by them if they can. Wikipedia aims to educate and inform all cultures as neutrally as possible. By refusing to host these images because it might offend a minority of the world's population, the much greater majority of the world has their ability to learn about a topic substantially impaired. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 16:11, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

That isn't what I mean. I mean I am persuaded by the argument that we have chosen very fringe images to illustrate Muhammad giving the reader an absolutely false impression of an important cultural issue. By "culturally inappropriate" I am not using coded language to refer to people's potential offense, but rather meaning those words quite literally. If we chose to illustrate our article on Wagner's ring cycle with images from a particular famous performance of parts of it, that would be culturally inappropriate, not least of which because they would misinform and mislead the reader.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:21, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Just to be clear, do you mean the present image selection on that article might lead the reader to think depictions of Muhammad are common, not exceptional? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 16:48, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

"Very fringe" is highly inappropriate language and should be avoided in this discussion - such images, and their modern equivalents, which we don't cover because there are none uploaded, are part of Shia iconography, as the 5 images on the Farsi WP article on Muhammad show. Shias are a minority in Islam, but the majority in Iran, Iraq, Bahrein, Lebanon, Azerbaijan etc, and a significant minority in Pakistan, India, the Gulf states, Afghanistan and Turkey. The images are especially objected to by Sunni Muslims from the Arabic-speaking world, and form an issue in Sunni-Shia tensions and conflict. We should avoid appearing to take sides on this. No doubt the illustrations to our Christian articles might give Muslim readers the impression that evangelical churches are decorated with paintings of Madonnas and saints. Johnbod (talk) 17:19, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

• Regarding "ongoing protests", I will ask again; where? I certainly hope you can point to something better than the waxing and waning IPs and WP:SPAs that show up form time to time to demand removal, the anonymous and uncertifiable petition from Petition-Online.com in 2009, or waving a vague hand at general protesting in the world, e.g. the Danish cartoon protesters. Tarc (talk) 17:49, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

If I can take a stab at the more general point here, we have a significant confusion on project about the definition of the word 'Neutral'. Roughly it put, many editors confound 'neutrality' with 'truth'. In other words, you get this split in understanding:

Neutrality as Truth

Wikipedia's purpose is to seek out and present what is true while removing or minimizing what is false. All information can be compared to objective reality (generally through skeptical methods), and the encyclopedia must actively oppose influences which seem to promote 'non-true' positions.

Neutrality as Balance

Wikipedia's purpose is to accurately portray topics in their proper real-world contexts. All information is valuable in its own right without regard to its objective facticity, and the encyclopedia must balance viewpoints to achieve a fair and unprejudiced description of the topic.

The oddest thing about this confusion is that it's not a problem on big issues: 'Neutrality as Truth' and 'Neutrality as Balance' are perfectly aligned when we're discussing, say, the theory of gravity. But the distinction becomes deadly on little issues. Skeptical methods, unfortunately, have a strong tendency to inject truth into vague areas, producing a kind of synthesis that's very difficult to deal with, because the editors actually think they are defending the truth. For a few examples (chosen from both current and past debates):

• the Muhammad images, where editors assert that Wikipedia is a 'secular' encyclopedia, injecting an anti-religious perspective as 'truth' and actively denying any religious participation on religious articles
• alternative medicine articles, where editors consistently insist that articles need to be written from the perspective of modern medicine - because modern medicine is 'true' - and as much as possible only allow the inclusion of critical sources in order to paint a negative picture of the topic
• fringe articles (like creationism), where the main goal of many editors is to debunk the topic rather than describe it
• religious minority articles (like Messianic Judaism, or the Myth issue that Til raised above) where editors take pains to inject the idea the mainstream ideas are 'proper' and the minority is 'abnormal'

In short, we end up with a sort of 'Tyranny of the Mainstream', in which off-beat topics are actively trounced rather than properly contextualized. It produces some very embarrassing articles, and a whole lot of pointless conflict.

In my view we should not be engaging in this kind of 'skeptical synthesis' - which boils down to the odd assertion that anything not proven by science is false and must be opposed - anywhere on project. But I've never been able to get this argument across anywhere I've tried. it's a problem. --Ludwigs2 16:25, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps the reason the argument doesn't get across is the fact that an encyclopedia is an epistemological context in which it doesn't make sense? "Neutrality as balance" as you define it is entirely incompatible with the idea of constructing a collection of knowledge. By definition, anything that is known to not be true has no place in any sort of balance; neutrality is reporting on the existence of the belief (and its prevalence, or social context, and so on) but not in pretending that it holds credence it does not in order to assuage (a subset of) readers. — Coren ^(talk) 16:36, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

What defines a fringe image? Muhammad is a historical figure for more than just Muslims, selecting only images from a particular slice if time and culture is inappropriate, but selecting multiple images is (particularly if they illustrate different slices of time and culture). In the "Ring Cycle" metaphor, it would be inappropriate to lead with images of Bugs Bunny dressed as a Valkyrie, but it would be appropriate to include such an image in the "cultural impact" section; however if Wagner disliked pictures of his opera being shown, we would still, within the limits of copyright, include such images on our pages despite his dislike.

"Neutrality" means "as represented in appropriate sources." Images are not sources, making it tricky to conclude about their use in terms of neutrality. For the most part, regarding images we are limited to whatever pool we can draw from and must make choices based on that. While the most "culturally appropriate" image makes sense for {{Muhammad}} (a calligraphy of Muhammad's name) because it represents the majority of the faithful within the culture, we should not be limited to solely that image for the entire article. Images should be educational and relevant, "neutrality" doesn't really apply.

The distinction isn't between "big" and "little" issues, it's actually a distinction between scientific and nonscientific issues. While all articles should describe the topic, when it comes to effectiveness of medical topics or the historical accuracy of the bible the description should clearly and immediately be followed by an indication that science doesn't support it. This is particularly exacerbated when political movements like creationism and complementary and alternative medicine, which assert based on antiquity or subjective appeal without testing or proving. These articles should cite scientific research when discussing whether it works, and whether there is any scientific validity to its premises. Arguments about scientific theories can not be compared to arguments about religion - science is predicated on seeking an objective truth which does exist and is supported by data. Skepticism is irrelevant to religion. Religion lacks objective truth, pays little attention to empirical evidence, and is little more than opinion within a specific cultural framework (and sometimes within a logical one if you're talking about theology). The issue of images in Muhammad isn't one of skepticisms/atheism versus faith/religion. I don't think images of Muhammad should be included in the page because I am an atheist. I think images of Muhammad should be used because they are educational and illustrative. Ludwigs2's statements may apply to other areas I have disagreed with him in such as acupuncture and astrology, but they don't apply to Muhammad.

As far as "tyranny of the mainstream" goes, even in articles on minority viewpoints the mainstream viewpoint should be clearly expressed. Wikipedia is based on the tyranny of the mainstream, as demonstrated in reliable sources. That's what NPOV means.

This is expanding beyond the ostensibly religious subject that heads the page. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 17:09, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

(ec) I think Ludwigs2 goes a bit too far occasionally and I don't agree with him abstractly on how Wikipedia should be neutral, but in practice he usually puts his finger on real problems even if he often overstates things a bit. To stay in his framework, I think we need to find the right balance between neutrality as truth and neutrality as balance. We want neither walled gardens that describe religious or fringe topics as if the outside world didn't exist, nor debunking pieces that impart no information about a religious or fringe topic other than the various ways in which it is objectively false. A good encyclopedia article on such a topic looks as if written by a non-believing scholar on the topic. It is not necessary to believe in Islam, alternative medicine, creationism or messianic Judaism to become an expert on such a topic, but any real expert will love his or her field of speciality with all its quirks. An expert may say very explicitly that transubstantiation or homeopathy has no shred of evidence for it, but will then proceed to share and explain all the interesting cultural constructs that have been built around it. This is what distinguishes sceptical experts from assembly line sceptics, who don't even want to know more about all the rubbish they are debunking.

As a practical example, if adherents of pseudoscience A practise rituals B, C, D, E and F for no good reason but consider them of the utmost importance, then it is our job to document rituals B, C, D, E and F in detail in our article on A, even if there isn't much intelligent that we can write by way of debunking them -- as is usually the case due to lack of sources. A small, sometimes tiny, amount of framing as pseudoscience is enough. (As some old Arbcom case said: It's enough to describe someone as a medium (spirituality). This makes the pseudoscience context amply clear, and any debunking that isn't related specifically to the person should happen at the main article.) Hans Adler 17:15, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Exactly. A perhaps more topical example might be Christianity: there is no question that it has been one of the primary shaper of most of Western culture for the past two millennia; its institutions and beliefs have had tremendous influence in every sphere of endeavour, in our laws, in our societal constructs, as well as arts and intellectual pursuits. I don't think you will find anyone to argue that it should not be covered in detail. This does not translate to any kind of necessity for "neutrality's" sake that that coverage presupposes the "correctness" of any of those beliefs, or that article contents should obey the tenets of that religion.

Likewise, parts of Islam have a prohibition against showing images of Mohammed. It would be stupid (and more than a little ridiculous) to go out of our way to offend those who hold that belief, but neither should religious dogma dictate the contents of our articles. Avoiding those illustrations because of the religious rule against them makes no more sense than rewriting the lede of psychiatry to describe it as false and evil to conform to other beliefs. — Coren ^(talk) 17:32, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

The argument is indeed not that we should let dogma dictate the content of our article, but that images which are against the "dogma" (to the extent that one can be said to exist) are entirely overrepresented. Cf. [14] / [15], also [16] / [17] (and note that the latter, despite its humorous title, is written by a top religious scholar). --JN466 01:08, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Neutrality to me means using logic. Logic trains us to view things impartially and to eschew emotional arguments which are not neutral. Lack of neutrality can generally be traced to emotional arguments that fit the pattern of logical fallacies. I see a logical fallacy being promoted known as 'slippery slope' which is common in questions of ethics: "if it's ok to offend Muslims who object to depictions of Muhammad, then therefore it is equally ok and neutral to antagonize adherents of any other belief system for the same reason, without having to remember what that reason is". That is not a logical argument at all; that is a fallacy of emotion. Logic and neutrality both demand impartiality. I wasn't asking for help with the Muhammad image problem, and I don't see wisdom in turning to that dispute for authoritative answers on how a distinst dispute should be handled. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 17:20, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

On wikipedia, neutrality is demonstrated with sources, not asserted by editors. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 17:40, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Two separate comments.

Firstly, I would agree that there are differences in the way in which we treat different religions on Wikipedia which might be considered unfair. But my take would be that the problem lies in us being too tolerant of material that represents a Judeo-Christian worldview. We carry quite a lot of material, for example, which treats the Bible as a legitimate source for historical fact. That's a semi-legitimate function of the way we work, because there are intermediary reliable source which do the same thing, and we have an inescapable editorial bias (we are overwhelmingly from a Christian or Jewish background). I don't think the answer to that is to lower our standards in terms of incorporation of religious viewpoints generally. "Creation myth" is just a standard academic term for religious stories about how it all began ([18]). What's happened recently is that we have taken a decision that this terminology is unacceptable regarding only one religious worldview - the one we are most familiar with. IMO this is highly problematic. Is the logical extension for us to decide that there is no such thing as a "myth" and that each one is instead rightfully a "narrative"?

Regarding the controversies over images of Mohammed, I would note that Muslim wikipedians have do not seem to have taken part in recent discussions, for whatever reason. I worry that some editors may be taking for granted the idea that Muslims generally find the current situation with the article intolerable and will not be able to appreciate different shades of opinion on the matter. I think this may be based on stereotyping. I wonder if the idea that we need to treat Muslims with kid gloves may be as problematic to many Muslims as the images. --FormerIP (talk) 17:24, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Agreed re: FIP's statement about Muslims taking offence, I've made this very point part of my analysis here.

Hans, how does one "debunk" a religion? Or a ritual? A specific religious belief that contradicts what is scientifically know, this can be debunked (because it's an empirical claim) and any article discussing it should point out that it is, to the best of our knowledge, wrong. I would agree that an article about a "psychic" such as John Edwards doesn't need an extensive discussion about how all mediums are frauds - but it would warrant a discussion of specific predictions or claims that this medium has made that turned out to be wrong, or that James Randi has pointed out is an example of cold reading.

The bible (or the Iliad for that matter) can be used as a historical document when discussing topics like ancient Jewish peoples and cities, though any corroboration or contradiction within archeology should be present as well. It can't be used as a factual document for empirical claims regarding the creation of the world, or the origin of species. The bible and other religious texts would be starting points for discussions like these, and would play a far less prominent role than the relevant archaeological papers.

This discussion seems to mix up multiple issues - religion (a cultural issue), science (an empirical issue), images of Muhammad (a specific cultural/religious issue), scholarship and in particular minority scholarship (a wikipedia-specific sourcing and reliability issue). WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 17:40, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I wish Wikipedia were more neutral in relation to religion. Most of our articles relating to religion are biased towards that religion's viewpoint. That isn't surprising but it is certainly a problem. And they probably are biased more towards a conservative view of that religion. I doubt that Til, for instance, would claim to speak for all Christians. He's characterising the situation in any case, Genesis is technically a creation myth (note that Til doesn't mention that argument is about using the term 'creation myth', not about calling Genesis a myth), but that is not all it is, although this isn't the place to go into that in detail. And it's surely pov to insist that 'Genesis creation myth' is the only acceptable title for the article. Dougweller (talk) 18:09, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Section break

(massive edit conflict)

@ Coren: This statement will pain you (sorry) but epistemologically speaking, 'truth' is a red herring. We do not have access to the ontos underpinning reality, and no scientist will ever claim that we do. What we have is theories that are correct within the limits of our ability to measure the world. 'Science' is nothing more than a set of elaborated beliefs backed up by strongly structured observations, and it can't be more than that without turning it into a belief in its own right and sacrificing its empirical underpinnings.

For example, let's take a fringe page I worked on a long time ago: Orgone. Now, anyone who thinks about orgone scientifically recognizes that as a scientific theory it's a load of crud. it's a grandiose hodgepodge of Freudian psychology, religious mysticism, and pseudoscientific ideation with no more than a shred of replicable evidence to its name. That being said, it's not false, it's just a wildly bad theory. It hasn't been refuted the way the phlogiston was, or exposed as a scientific hoax like Piltdown man, and there are still people lurking in odd corners of the world who use it (by their own lights) meaningfully. Trying to say that it's false goes well beyond what science can or has said about orgone - we can only get there on-project by using one form or another of synthesis. Yet it's precisely this distinction - orgone as bad theory vs. orgone as false - that caused trouble on the page, for exactly the reasons I outlined above.

No editor in their right mind would allow Orgone to be added to physical cosmology - as a cosmological theory orgone is just plain bad, and doesn't deserve a place there. But what about a reader who is interested in Orgone in its own right, as part of the history of ideas? I doubt such a reader needs or wants to wade through wiki-editor opinion-mongering about how stupid and crazy the concept of Orgone actually is. The badness of the theory is self-evident is an unbiased presentation of the topic; it doesn't need to be debunked as ontologically false; it just needs to be described as what it is in a balanced manner.

It's this arena of the 'History of Ideas' where the neutrality-as-truth concept starts to unravel. Many ideas in the history of ideas are wrong, yet still need fair presentation and explanation. Why should they be treated less dispassionately than other ideas?

@ WLU: I actually suggested that we create a section on Muhammad called 'art historical depictions' which would be a home for images of the prophet - such a section (as I explained) would have provided a justification for having the images there which would have quelled any objections. The idea was unceremoniously and vocally shot down (you'll have to ask the other editors why - I never got a good reason for it).

Aside from that, I'm troubled by a couple of your points:

• are you actually suggesting that images should not be covered by NPOV? As I've said elsewhere, that opens a huge loophole for POV-pushing - find the right controversial image, push it onto the page, and laugh as the 'other side' squirms because they can't remove it. That should not be encouraged.
• 'big' vs. 'little' (while maybe not the best terms) are not 'scientific' vs. 'nonscientific'. it actually marks the difference between where science is applicable and where science is not applicable. science is a very powerful tool within it's established demesne - where it can build theories and subject them to empirical observation - but outside that it's not particularly useful. Science can tell us that there is no empirical evidence that God exists, but it can only infer that God does not exist, and is of no use whatsoever in telling us what we should think about that. My concern is that we restrict science to saying what science actually says, and not try to infer more.
• NPOV means "representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources", as it says in its first line. that is not a statement that supports the claim that wikipedia is a tyranny of the majority.

You seem to be arguing against inclusiveness, as though there is some singular 'neutral' perspective that we should find and always use in all articles. That seems to me to be about as far from the spirit of NPOV as it is possible to get without actually ignoring the text. --Ludwigs2 18:21, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Except that "fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias" very specifically does not mean "uncritically, and from a sympathetic point of view". Your own example, orgone, is especially illustrative: it makes no attempt to defend the concept as anything but a thoroughly discredited pseudoscientific hypothesis. It details its history, explains the underlying beliefs, and even discuss some of its adherents. It makes no attempt to validate the hypothesis, and the article isn't written "in-universe" begging the question of the validity of the underlying beliefs. Exactly everything our articles on religion tend to fail at.

And no, I said nothing along the lines that images are not bound by NPOV. Indeed, I've stated the exact opposite: selection of images should very specifically not be dictated by a religious POV – whatever that POV is. Oops, that wasn't directed at me! — Coren ^(talk) 19:34, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

As for your point on knowledge, well, solipsism might be an interesting intellectual exercise but it won't write an encyclopedia. Absolutely every reasonable definition of knowledge has "justified true belief" as its foundation, and "nothing is really knowable" may well be a common rallying cry of apologists for "faith-based" way of thinking but it's not what we do here. We're working towards "[...] freely share in the sum of all knowledge." — Coren ^(talk) 19:04, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

If a section on depictions of Muhammad existed, it would be a great place to discuss the history of iconoclasm, key images demonstrating how depictions of Muhammad have changed within the culture if Islam (such as showing his face to veiling his face to replacing his face or body with a flame) and an image related to modern controversies such as the Dutch one (I would suggest this one). It would not be appropriate to use that section of the page as a "holding pen" in which all images are shoved and the rest of the page empty. Like most pages on historical figures and events, if we have paintings that illustrate specific periods of his life or actions taken, we should use them - we have many to choose from covering his birth, infancy, youth, call to prophecy, first revelation, preaching, trip to Mecca, night journey, conquests, death and even time in heaven. If this were any other page, this would be without controversy bar the decision of which to use. Again - a section on depictions is valuable and I would argue necessary. Using that section to hold all images is inappropriately censoring the rest of the page to the detriment of the article.

I'm not suggesting images be covered by NPOV simply because they are not sources and NPOV covers content; bar one line in WP:UNDUE images are not mentioned and can easily be handled, like most POV disputes, by editors discussing and accepting consensus.

Has any editor suggested the use of science to prove one religion is true at the expense of any other, or that science can determine which image of Muhammad is appropriate to use? If not, I'm not sure why we're discussing it. I'm well aware of the distinctions between science and religion and why science is inherently superior in virtually every field. Science should not get absolute say over all articles on wikipedia, but when religion attempts to make empirical claims, science should carry equal (sometimes more) weight.

Regards your third bullet, the key for me is the word "proportionately". In this regard, wikipedia should be a tyranny of the majority in that the most weight and the most text should go to what the most scholars believe, and that this opinion should appear first, and be given "right of rebuttal" where possible for minority viewpoints. However, those minority viewpoints should be included up to a certain threshold, and tiny minorities (such as the idea that satanic ritual abuse was real) should only appear in lesser articles.

I hope this demonstrates that you are misunderstanding my points. Wikipedia should be inclusive, but not indiscriminate. Those wishing to assert a majority view should do so by reference to the best, most reliable sources they can find, in quantity. Those who wish to include minority views should use the best, most reliable sources they can find. Those who can't justify their inclusions with reference to reliable sources should not be supported in their effort to add text. I don't find this to be controversial, it seems quite squarely in keeping with NPOV.

Regards Muhammad, the discussion of iconoclasm and depictions of Muhammad in Islam should be supported with sources. The page itself should be peppered with images relevant to the text they accompany. The idea that Muslims are unable to contain their offense at the idea of a non-Muslim seeing an image of their prophet is infantilizing, offensive and ultimately irrelevant. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 19:06, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

@ Coren: I was pointing to Orgone for its past conflicts, not its current state. The current article is mostly my writing (the editors I had that long-ago dispute with are not currently active on project, for differing reasons), and - setting aside some tweaks and expansions it could use - I'm reasonably content with it. It was not always that way; you should see some of the heavy-handed language that had to be discarded to get it to this state.

With respect to your other point: the epistemological/ontological divide is not solipsistic, not unless you consider the process of scientific induction itself to be solipsism. Because that is the basic premise of induction: we observe individual cases, we infer general rules, and those general rules are always subject to revision by further observation. justified belief is not truth; In fact, a big part of the development of science was an effort to get away from proclamations of prima facie 'truth' and base scientific authority in the justification of theories through presented evidence. The problems I'm pointing out above occur because some editors present a secular, scientific viewpoint as a prima facie 'truth' in its own right, one that applies anywhere and everywhere. That is science used in an unscientific way.

More to the point, though, 'knowledge' is more complex than you are allowing. This isn't a 'faith-based' vs. 'science-based' dichotomy; There are many things to 'know' about faiths that are utterly unrelated to science, but we shouldn't think less about that knowledge just because it's a-scientific. I think we all get to caught up in the 'special case' scenarios like Creationism (where faith confronts secular science directly in an absurd effort to reassert religious authority). Most of the time, faith and science are orthogonal domains, and trying to subsume either into the other is misguided. --Ludwigs2 20:31, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it is. Ultimately, we need some operating understanding of what knowledge is if we are to collect it, and no school of though I am aware of strays far from "justified true belief" even though there are caveats with too literal an interpretation. The distinction isn't science vs. not science, it's reality vs. faith; that science is currently the most successful method for gathering knowledge about the world is a side effect (and an objective) of the method, but it is in no way the only method. Nevertheless, nobody can know something that is false or unfalsifiable for any meaningful meaning of "knowledge". — Coren ^(talk) 23:09, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Coren: You and I both know exactly what unicorns look like and how they behave, and we even have an article on them. That is certainly knowledge about something that is false. You and I both know that Christians and Jews have a God they sometimes call Yahweh and Muslims call God Allah, and in all three cases that God has definable characteristics (omnipotent, omniscient, etc…) That is certainly knowledge about something unfalsifiable. You are presenting a simplistic view of knowledge in which only 'simple facts' exist and all information of cultural relevance is excluded, and I suppose within that simplistic worldview it is meaningless to talk about anything false. But if we wrote Wikipedia from that worldview it would be a very limited and mostly useless encyclopedia.

We are dealing with a faith that contains hundreds of millions of people. Do we have knowledge about the tenets of that faith? We sure do. Are those tenets unfalsifiable? Yes, clearly. Do we ignore those tenets because they are unfalsifiable? No, clearly not. Unless you are able to state categorically that all religion is false (which you can't - that's a secular belief which is also unfalsifiable), then NPOV insists that we account for all significant perspectives. This does not mean (obviously) that we let religious viewpoints run rampant over the project, but we do not exclude them on topics of importance to their faith any more than we would exclude a physicist from working on physics articles.

You are trying to narrow the focus of the project down to that smallish segment of human knowledge that is covered by scientific authority, and dismiss the rest as irrelevant. You might as well suggest that we delete all our articles on poetry because there are no mathematical models for producing it. Or maybe you'd suggest that we replace all the sample poems on those pages with really bad poetry, because allowing good poetry is 'poetic advocacy', and that can only lead to mobs of aesthetes overrunning the project making everything prettier. Ghastly prospect… --Ludwigs2 17:54, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

@WLU: actually, my response is simpler than I feared. I don't actually disagree with you for the most part; we're just using words differently (what you're talking about is what I consider NPOV; Tyranny of the Mainstream, for me, is a much harsher position that actively suppresses non-mainstream views). The main point we're miscommunication on is apparently the whole religion thing, which isn't 'science' per se but rather 'secularism' (or if you want to be uber-precise, the cultural bias in the west towards science-based secularism). The problem on Muhammad (and on other religious pages) lies in editors entering the discussion with the ultra-secular premise that all religion is valueless. In fact, it is the case, I think, that religion is largely valueless for scientific claims. But faith has a value of its own for a lot of our readers, and I don't see the purpose in ignoring that value programmatically. The whole conflict over the Muhammad images started because I asked that we evaluate the purpose of the images in the article with respect to their potential offense (on the assumption that editors would naturally feel that offending people without cause was a bad thing). That assumption proved to be mistaken, obviously, but the point still stands: our reader's religious preferences may not have a lot of impact on our decisions, but it ought to have some sway. forbidding it to have an impact in even the most trivial cases seems perverse. --Ludwigs2 21:09, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Having read many thousands of words on Talk:Muhammad/images and having just re-read your initial comments, I find your statement at odds with your initial posts. I don't recall any editors saying extra images should be placed on the page to piss off Muslims. I recall numerous saying the images should not be removed because of a particular religious faith's beliefs about images of Muhammad [19], [20], [21]. If we were on the same page, then there probably wouldn't be thousands of words sprawling across half a dozen pages and no assumption that editors are advocating for images of Muhammad purely out of spite. Drawing in the purported conflict between science, religion and by implication atheism seems to read a rather lot into the situation. If we are truly on the same page, you probably would have ceased advocating for reducing the number of images on Muhammad, particularly based on the WMF resolution. Either that or someone changed your mind during the discussion - in which case why is this conversation continuing across so many pages? Our readers preferences regarding images, religious or otherwise, are already strongly accounted for to the limits of software vis a vis the numerous means of filtering out whole classes of images. Merely because we do not actively pander to a minority of an already minority religious group in the world does not mean active efforts to offend. That assumption is itself quite offensive. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 21:34, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs tends to get a bit tangled up when making these arguments. Some days the rest of us are being accused of intentionally insulting Muslims by using images in the Muhammad article, other days it is ok to use images are long as they are relevant to the subject matter (though he feels that threshold isn't met for this article), and then there's days like today where the argument is a fallback on "religious preferences ought to have some sway". I cannot overstate enough to the 3rd that "no, it shouldn't". Tarc (talk) 22:15, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I usually try to avoid discussions like this, but I tend to disagree to some extent. I do not think that religious preferences should hold sway but, at the same time, I think it is possible to have respect for the subjects we write about. When writing about a religion, we are ultimately writing about the people who believe that religion, and I don't see how it hurts to show them some basic human dignity.

When writing about religion, I try to keep in mind that it is a belief held by people and should be treated with care to accurately define their belief. I find it helpful to look at how other encyclopedias treat them, like the Encyclopedia of religion and society or other such publications. I think it is important to remember that, to the believer of a religion, it most certainly is the truth. Above it all, I think we also have a responsibility to define the religion accurately for those who are interested in finding out about it, but without preaching it or proclaiming it to be the only "truth."

On the pictures of Muhammad, I would also have some consideration for the people who believe. I would seriously ask myself if the pictures are absolutely necessary to define the subject. Don't get me wrong, I really like pictures, especially if they assist in visualizing the text, but I would really question if they are necessary. I've never understood why it is offensive, but I can still respect the fact that it is. To use an analogy, if I was writing an article about, say ... a rape, I would seriously ask myself if revealing the name of the victim is really necessary. I may have the name, maybe even a photo, but I would seriously have to consider whether I should publish it, simply because I can, or if the subject deserves a little respect for privacy. Zaereth (talk) 23:32, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

The problem is, to write articles that take religious restrictions or beliefs into account, you're making a bad or incomplete article for the rest of the readers that are not adherents of the faith. That's where the "not censored" concept comes in; we can't prohibit or water down material just because a small group of people find it objectionable. Doubly so if it cheapens the experience for the rest of us. Tarc (talk) 01:03, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

WLU - I'll tell you, I find it incomprehensible how many editors on this topic cannot keep cause and effect straight in their heads. so let me be absolutely clear: I do not know what causes editors to insist on having these images on the article. I can't see any sense to it myself, and every time I ask the question I get a mouthful on why the images can't be removed but nary a peep on why they're there in the first place. However, the effect is unambiguous and clear: including these controversial images makes Wikipedia look like it is snubbing a major world religion for no appreciable reason. Now, my friends over on Muhammad (like Tarc here) are doing a great job spinning out weaselly ad hominems to make me look like the bad guy (see Tarc's snide little post above), and who knows, maybe they'll succeed and I can count my days left on project in single digits. whatever… But my argument has always been the same, and it's always been about the project itself rather about the people involved. Using these controversial images without some overriding justification sends an en clair message, one that's impossible to miss: Wikipedia itself is telling the Muslim community that they are not worthy of any respect. You can spin that any way you like - I've heard them all, so no surprises there - but I'm telling you it's a piss-poor attitude for an encyclopedia to take. But again, whatever: at the end of the day you're going to have to sit down with your own conscience and make your own choices.

It aint rocket science...

If you want to talk more about the Muhammad thing, post above; let's not turn every durned thread into a rehash of the same ridiculousness. At any rate, I'm not going to respond to anything more about it in this thread, so... --Ludwigs2 23:24, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

What causes editors to "include images on the page"? WP:IMAGE and their unambiguous usefulness on pages. The idea that wikipedia is telling Muslims they are not worth of respect (and again, the idea that Muslims are so thin skinned the can't tolerate the thought that non-Muslims might look at an image of their prophet is insulting) is untenable, considering the specific instructions on how to remove these images from your personal preference, including these images explicitly. And if this ground has been trod repeatedly (and it looks like it has), I can see why editors, faced for the fifth, tenth or fiftieth repetition of the same argument, might be abrupt. Previous consensus should not be revisited unless there is something new. Arguably the WMF's new resolution is worth discussion, but only to the discussion whether the new resolution alters things. Looks pretty clear that it doesn't, both in the discussion and in my own analysis. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 23:58, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs: You say "including these controversial images makes Wikipedia look like it is snubbing a major world religion for no appreciable reason". But, on this central point, I just don't think there good evidence that you are correct. And that's something I find dismaying about the whole campaign. On the one hand, it seems to me to be just based on pure assumption about what Muslims think. On the other, it fails to take into account the possibly disastrous effect on Muslims of being perceived as being fanatical and blinkered. This is something that disempowers them and gives strength to organisations such as the English Defence League.

I seriously suspect that if you were to put a group of Islamic scholars in a room and ask them to debate this issue, they would do do for an extended period, not reach a definitive conclusion and express opinions representing every shade of opinion you can think of. Just like us. Because people have diverse opinions and Muslims are no exception. And because it is a complicated issue. Sharia does not tend to simplify real-world issues into neat certainties. (BTW, the group of scholars I tried this with escaped, so I can't be entirely sure). --FormerIP (talk) 01:05, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Frankly, the issue is not that we have pictures of Muhammad in Wikipedia (no one in this discussion e.g. has argued against having an article on Depictions of Muhammad that includes examples). The issue is why we have so many in the article on Muhammad, given that scholars tell us that such images are rarities—that they form a special, always controversial category in Islamic art that is neither iconic nor representative of how Muhammad is portrayed. --JN466 01:58, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe your take of scholarly opinion on the matter is accurate. Some may feel that way, yes, but once again we're back to dealing with a minority opinion. Though I do not feel it would gain much traction, your position at least invites dialog. The problem is that we've had users..or a user...who came to the Muhammad article making demands, demands that echo about 95% of the IPs and SPAs that have hit the article talk page for years. Demands on top of insults and denigrations of the editors who disagreed made a perennially-tense topic area pretty much explode. Tarc (talk) 04:34, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

It is not scholars that say they are rarities; wikipedians are claiming that they are rarities, that they are "fringe" and have no educational value. But scholars, after events like the fatwah against Salman Rushdie, 9/11 and the Danish cartoons, have given careful explanations of the historic use of images in Islamic art. Scholars like Omid Safi, Jytte Klausen and Timothy Winter have written extensively on the historic images; as has the late Ernst J. Grube, the first curator of the Islamic collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Safi, born in Iran and now Professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, has produced the book "Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters", which explains in great detail the historic images. Much of what he writes contradicts what Jayen466 has been claiming; many of the Persian miniatures were painted by Sunni muslims. Safi wrote an article for the Washington Post on this.[22] The Medieval images have the same status as Books of Hours in France, i.e. they were produced for a small nobility. Both Britain and to a much larger extent France have significant Muslim populations. Apart from institutes/museums devoted to the Arab/Islamic world, the two national libraries, the British Library and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF), have extensive collections. These have been on display in exhibitions devoted to understanding the history of Islamic art (still viewable on the websites of the Fitzwilliam Museum [23][24] and the BNF [25]). The Metropolitan Museum has also recently reopened its Islamic collection after remodeling on 1 November 2011.[26] (note the illuminated manuscript of the Prophet Muhammad's Night Journey on Buraq). The purpose of these exhibitions is educational: to explain the history and diversity of Islamic art and culture to the general public. At a time when wikipedia/wikimedia is begging art collections to make available digital images of their older works of art, it would seem odd that they would contemplate taking a stance so much at odds with the directors and curators of those collections. It's hard to tell why people started using the wiki-word "fringe" in this case. It is worth remembering that some of the Persian miniatures under discussion date from the same period as the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. Mathsci (talk) 07:19, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Ernst J. Grube, writing about these images, said, "Yet for many reasons, a fully developed Muslim iconography – in the sense that the West would understand it – never emerged in Islamic culture, although representations of Muhammad comprise a special category of Muslim religious painting that developed within the framework of Islamic art. They too, often appear in the larger context of a general world history. And however unexpectedly the image may appear, there are also illustrated Muslim texts that deal specifically with the life of the Prophet and, even more astonishingly, with the metaphysical and highly mysterious mi'raj, the journey made by the Prophet during the course of just one night through all the Heavens and into Hell. Such paintings bear comparison with the cycles of the Life Christ in Christian churches or manuscripts." Comparing Islamic religious art to Christian religious art, he writes nevertheless, "... after the acceptance of Christianity by Rome in the fourth century under Constantine, the change from pure symbol to unmistakably Christian imagery was fairly rapid. Islam, by contrast, never officially adopted a figural religious iconography; indeed, the very lawfulness of images was hotly debated in the early Islamic centuries. In mosques there are no cycles of paintings illustrating the prophet's life and deeds comparable to those of the life of Christ or the saints in Christian churches or, for that matter, the life of the Buddha in Buddhist temples. Thus, that one of the most extraordinary images of the Prophet's Night Journey should appear in poetic texts written in Persian, where it is apparently "out of context", suggests that such pictures comprise a highly elusive form of religious imagery ..." (Peerless Images, p. 133). This is not a description of mainstream Islamic art, but expressly identified as a description of a special, geographically and temporally limited subcategory of it. --JN466 08:01, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

These are from the texts that accompany the images of the Night Journey in his 2002 book. The images are taken from the 1436 Timorid manuscript from Herat in Afghanistan in the BNF in Paris. I provided links to images from the book in the discussion on Talk:Muhammad/Images where each of the 30 or so plates has an individual description. The images are quite representative of art of the period, with their inscriptions in several languages. The depictions of hell are considered to be derived from artistic traditions from the Far East. Here is one of those images that I uploaded yesterday.File:Miraj-BNF-1436.jpg A whole book devoted to the Night Journey is uncommon, but then so is the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Mathsci (talk) 08:37, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

The text I quoted is from the introduction to the section "Religious painting in the Islamic period", within Grube's chapter "The primary themes of Iranian Imagery" in the book Peerless images: Persian painting and its sources. (Neither the section nor the chapter are focused on the Night Journey.) No one says that such images aren't of interest to art historians, or that they are unworthy of coverage in Wikipedia. They're simply not good examples of the mainstream portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad in Islamic religious art, to the extent that they should overwhelm other, more iconic visual imagery in our article on Muhammad. --JN466 09:11, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

You have made your personal point of view quite clear. You are attempting to marginalize and dismiss works of art which are currently being displayed prominently in leading international museums and libraries and on their websites. No historian of Islamic art has indicated that these works are marginal or insignificant. No director or curator considers that these historical Muslim-created masterworks could cause offense. (See the link below to an illuminated page from a museum in Tehran.) Sensibilities and levels of tolerance or intolerance vary from country to country. Had any such plates been left in Herat in Afghanistan during the Taleban uprising, there is a chance that they might have been destroyed. Mathsci (talk) 10:58, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I am not attempting to marginalise great art. I am pointing out that authoritative sources describe this art as marginal within the Islamic tradition. --JN466 11:25, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

I posted some sources above, by acknowledged experts on Islam: Cf. [27] / [28], also [29] / [30]. More could be added: [31], [32], [33], [34], [35], [36] I am willing to entertain the idea that there may be other sources that say something else. And I am aware that in Iran popular depictions of Muhammad are and were tolerated. But I have seen no sources indicating that figurative (rather than calligraphic) representations of Muhammad have ever played a significant role in public religious life in Islam (let alone indicating that this view would be a majority opinion). Even authors focused on the images describe them as an anomaly restricted to the narrow niche of miniatures in books made for the private enjoyment of wealthy Persian patrons at certain times and in certain locales. If you are aware of sources containing a different characterisation of the Islamic mainstream, please show them to me. --JN466 07:44, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

"Islam for dummies" is hardly a scholarly source. Jayen466 continues to make subjective and unscholarly statements which contradict what experts like Omid Safi write. His arguments are anachronistic and ignore the whole question of patronage in the arts. (The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry were likewise also produced for a tiny noble elite.) Illuminated manuscripts of Persian poetry often had a frontispiece depicting the Night Journey of the Prophet Muhammad. Jayen466's arguments are undercut by current scholarship where many major museums and libraries in the West are displaying illuminated manuscripts of this type. Did Jayen466 wave a copy of "Islam for dummies" at the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum when a Night Journey from the British Library was on display a year ago? Mathsci (talk) 08:15, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Islam for Dummies, despite the jocular title, is published by John Wiley & Sons, which is a scientific publisher, and written by Malcolm Clark, a professor of religion (A.B., Harvard College; B.D., M.A., Ph.D., Yale Divinity School; Post-doctoral study at Hebrew University, Israel Biblical Studies, Islam, Religion and Gender, American Religion). It is a best-seller and required reading for American army officers—a good general source that gives a useful overview to inform our talk page discussion. Besides, it is certainly not the only such source I have brought forward. --JN466 08:26, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

It is in exactly the same series as "Everyday math for dummies." [37] I think Omid Safi's writings are more reliable, although obviously harder to carry around on the battlefield. Mathsci (talk) 09:11, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

To get some idea of scholarship in this area, the Shahnama project coordinated by the University of Cambridge is recording all images from the Persian Book of Kings, including less accessible manuscripts in Tehran. Here for example is the page depicting the images of the Prophet Muhammad in the Parable of the Ship of Faith. [38] This includes this image from 1480 in the Malik National Museum of Iran in Tehran.[39] Mathsci (talk) 10:37, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Mathsci, this is all well and good. I love Sufism. I like this art. It is fine art. Our articles on Depictions of Muhammad or Persian miniature painting should be sumptuously illustrated with it. But these are specialist sources on this specialist topic. They are sources about Persian art, not generic sources about Muhammad. --JN466 11:30, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

It's just amazing how much emotional energy this 'images of muhammad' issue brings up on project…

I don't want to dispute what Mathsci says - he's merely pointing out what we all know, that there are clear examples of full-face depictions of the prophet in Islamic history. However, as Jayen points out, in part, the whole argument is somewhat beside the point:

• The images are not common presentations, but non-representative artwork from particular historical periods, and moreover artwork largely restricted to small wealthy segments of the populations of their time.
• This article is about Muhammad, not about Persia, Persian art, art history, or any other topic in which referring to the art-historic value of the images would make sense

Really, Mathsci's argument fails both WEIGHT and COATRACK: he is overstating the prevalence of this style of iconography, and trying to use that art-historical exaggeration to hook in images that are otherwise of no particular significance to the topic. He may be right that using the term 'Fringe' is an exaggeration (though I'm not certain anyone except him has called this a fringe issue - maybe he was confused by my generalized statement above where I talk about fringe topics), but wp:UNDUE certainly applies here.

@ FormerIP: this is not a mere assumption about what Muslims think.[40] It is a precept of their faith not to show images of the prophet, there are countless sources in the real world that discuss this, and there are countless complaints about these images in the Muhammad archives. Your statement is incomprehensible. and you go on to suggest that not showing images of the prophet would make Muslim's look fanatical (apparently to convince us that we ought to show pictures of Muhammad if we want Muslims to look reasonable)?

The editors advocating for these images (not just FormerIP, but most of them) have a distinctly unpleasant tendency to trivialize and fanaticize Muslim viewpoints. We are not talking about some small group of wild-eyed, hair-shirt Islamists; this is a basic part of the religious understanding of millions (tens of millions, hundreds of millions) of people. Some of them (obviously) are more invested in it than others - there are fanatics and people who don't much care - but that's irrelevant. I mean, imagine a charitable organization that responded to a famine in Israel by sending them 50,000 pounds of pork chops, and then justified it by saying: "Well, most Jews don't really care about that 'pork' thing, and those few fanatics who do don't have to eat it." That kind of justification is in itself reprehensible.

We can have a decent discussion over whether Wikipedia needs/wants to offend the religious beliefs of all these people, but please stop trying to make the fact that we are offending their religious beliefs 'go away'. That kind of intellectual dishonesty gets in the way of a reasonable discussion. --Ludwigs2 14:17, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

After reading the epos above ... that Wikipedia ought not include derisory material about any religion is likely according to the WMF vague principle of "least astonishment." Non-derisory images of unquestioned historic Islamic origin should not likely fall into that category, and the claim that they do fails. Wikipedia can not and ought not obey every stricture of scripture for every religious group -- IIRC, all images are forbidden by the Qu'ran according to some groups, not just images of Muhammed. If we seek to "offend absolutely no one" we really should jut remove all images entirely, as that is the only way to fully satisfy those groups. This is not "intellectual dishonesty" is is known as "reality." Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:56, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Framing this as an all-or-nothing choice was never likely to get us further. But we don't need 6 images from a small minority tradition of figurative representation whose presence in such numbers does astonish (Omid Safi's article linked above is quite informative in that respect), and gives a skewed image of how Muhammad is generally represented in Islam. It's his name and words (Quranic quotations) that are omnipresent in public contexts. Pointing out that figurative images exist, along with an example, is enough to inform the interested reader, point them to where they can find more, and put us above suspicion of including such images gratuitously. NPOV means representing minority viewpoints in proportion to their prominence. --JN466 15:38, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

The argument "we shouldn't include so many images because they all come from a very limited artistic traditions" is untenable. If we had as many images of Muhammad to chose from as we do the late, great zombie known as Jesus, this is a valid discussion to have. Having a very small number of images to draw upon means we will probably have to choose images first based on what scene they depict, then based on whether we have different artistic lineages to draw from. "We shouldn't use so many Sunni images" is a valid statement if we have an enormous number of Sunni, Shi'ite, Christian, Chinese, Indonesian, African, Bah'ai, Sufi, contemporary and atheist images to draw upon. If we only have one image of Muhammad's birth, and it happens to be Persian, and 7/10 of the images on the page are Persian, we are faced with a choice of another Persian image, or no image. Given that choice, I would rather have an image and a section explaining why there are so many images from Persia.

"We are not talking about some small group of wild-eyed, hair-shirt Islamists; this is a basic part of the religious understanding of millions (tens of millions, hundreds of millions) of people." Actually most of us are talking about the billions of people who aren't Muslim; some are talking about how the millions of Muslims who might not want to see depictions of Muhammad have numerous options that would prevent them from seeing said images. I can't see that as anything but reasonable acommodation. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 16:29, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

There are plenty of more mainstream images we could use that would add significant educational value (cf. the Arabic article). For example, we don't have any images of relics of Muhammad. These are culturally important parts of Muhammad's reception. At any rate, recent comments at the images talk page tended towards the view that if anything, we have too many images for the text to flow cleanly. --JN466 17:00, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

More to the point, the convention in Islam is not to show depictions of the prophet at all. In this case we have to treat all of the 'non-depictive' forms (Muhammad as a flame, calligraphic representations of Muhammad's name, etc.) as though they are depictions of Muhammad - because that is how Muslims mostly depict the prophet - and thus we have a very large array of non-depictive images to draw from. Please keep in mind that this is not some random absence (as though no one thought it was important to refer to Muhammad in art), but rather a studious avoidance. we shouldn't treat the instances where the rule is broken as though they are the norm. --Ludwigs2 17:15, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Quite. We also don't have a single calligraphic quotation from the Qur'an, despite the fact that they're ubiquitous throughout the Islamic world and are the direct cultural equivalent of Christian iconic art. --JN466 17:33, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

@ Collect. No one is arguing images should be removed simply because they are offensive. All of the arguments here and at Talk:Muhammad/images against naked-faced images of Muhammad address either the excessive number of such images compared to usual image use in similar sources or compared to the frequency with which they occur historically (I find these arguments unconvincing), or the fact that the present use of such images in our article is gratuitous.

It has been stated above that to remove them from the article would deny readers information important to their full understanding of the topic. This is a mistaken view. All images of Muhammad presently in that article could be removed without negatively affecting the reader's understanding of the topic in any significant way. They are decoration.

Would most Muslims find the gratuitous liberal peppering of Muhammad with depictions of his naked face insulting? Undoubtedly. You may doubt it but how many Muslims do you know? I know lots, have lived among them for years. Even very liberal Muslims are insulted by gratuitous offensiveness.

There are, by the way, places in that article that could justify such images. The section on Western reception would be significantly improved by inclusion of one of the many Western medieval depictions of Muhammad as a charlatan or demon. That, coupled with a picture of Muhammad among history's great law-makers in the frieze surrounding Washington's Supreme Court building would demonstrate the shift from contempt to respect that occurred between medieval and modern times – the essential message of that section. I proposed this but editors on the page felt it best to avoid the deliberately offensive medieval image and apparently we've had complaints about the frieze picture before.

So, on that page, offensive decorative "illustrations", uninformed often misleading artist's imaginings from centuries after the events depicted, that tell the reader nothing that isn't clearly conveyed in the text, are being defended tooth and claw, while offensive images that would actually exemplify an historical trend that is the very essence of a section of the article, are being excluded on the grounds that they're offensive. The former images, mere illustrations, are an insult due to their gratuitousness; the latter, as examples of the topic of the section, though nominally more offensive, would be no insult because they have undeniable, obvious, genuine didactic value. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 16:20, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Sigh. How many times do you and Ludwigs need to be reminded that "All images of Muhammad presently in that article could be removed without negatively affecting the reader's understanding of the topic in any significant way. They are decoration." is not fact, but opinion? And the opinion of a negligible amount of editors at that. Tarc (talk) 17:23, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Actually, it's a proposition supported by a good argument. The images of Muhammad presently in the article have no didactic value because the only thing they tell us that is not already in the article is something about the historical development of Islamic art, which is not the topic of the article. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 17:54, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

If the images were only in the article to show the development of Islamic art, then they should be removed for irrelevance. However, the images in the article are showing Muhammad performing the major actions in his life: receiving revelation, preaching his revelation, putting the black stone in the Kaaba, and leading a campaign. I think that these are just as relevant to his article as are images of Paul Revere on a horse in his article, Laurence Olivier acting in his article, or Hannibal crossing the Alps in his. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 20:02, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Arctic.gnome: The problem with that argument (which has been raised multiple times elsewhere) is that these aren't actually depictions of anything - they are artistic representations of events for which the artists had no first-hand experience or independent second-hand descriptions. No one knows what Muhammad looked like, and there are no secondary texts; these images are on the same level as (say) da Vinci's The Last Supper as far as accuracy goes (which is to say, not at all...). That makes them of little concrete value as direct sources of information. And so we're left with the question that I've been asking all along: are these non-representative, non-mainstream works of art honestly of sufficient importance to the article to justify offending the beliefs of millions of Muslims?

If there were a current precept in Christianity (as there had been at a couple of points in history) that depictions of Christ should not be made, I'd be making this same argument at that page, because the images of Christ we have are also artistic fabrications. But there's no such precept in Christianity, so the issue doesn't arise there. It does arise on Muhammad, and it's something that needs to be considered for the sake of the reputation of the encyclopedia. --Ludwigs2 20:50, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Richard Chartres, Bishop of London

I find it hard to believe there are no images of this hugely well known man available for us to use. --Kittybrewster ☎ 16:43, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I had the pleasure of meeting him a few months back, and I think I have his card somewhere. If I can find his email address, I'll contact him and ask him.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:03, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

(e/c) Given that the chap is alive and well, perhaps all that is needed is that one of us who is geographically near and who has a modicum of talent at portraits should give him a ring and propose a quick session? I very much doubt that it would pose a significant issue beyond a few moments of his time. — Coren ^(talk) 17:04, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Or ask some users on Flickr - there's some creative commons licensed ones on there, but unfortunately not for commercial use. Polequant (talk) 17:14, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

[Update] I have emailed him to ask if he has one he'd like to donate. If he doesn't have one, I'll try to dig up a local photographer (maybe Allan Warren will be willing).--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:22, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

• How is "Chartres" pronounced, as a French form or as "Char-terrs" like the street in the New Orleans French Quarter (one street behind Decatur Street along the Mississippi)? -Wikid77 04:24, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Staff number

In your personal appeal on main page you are writing that: "We have 400 servers and 93 staff.", but in Alan Sohn's appeal we can read, that "We have 400 servers and 73 staff." Small mistake but not unimportant, I think.. Danim (talk) 21:28, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like a typo in his. I'm not really involved in putting these up, so I wonder where the best place is to let people know about this!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:07, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

The "official" number is being kept up to date by the Foundation's human resources department at wmf:Template:STAFF-COUNT.

On m:Talk:Fundraising 2011/Jimmy Letter 002/en, the Fundraising team has replied to a similar question.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 23:19, 9 November 2011 (UTC)