User talk:Trollwatcher

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Trollwatcher (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

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My user page has been deleted. My Username has been blocked and so has my IP address. Could someone explain what's going on as I can't work out why. Is this vandalism ? Can someone put things back to normal ? Trollwatcher 10:56, 21 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome!

Hello, Trollwatcher, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! -- KHM03 20:32, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Council of Nicaea

Hello, Trollwatcher, I wonder by your knowledge of Church History that you yourself might come from an Orthodoxy background. If you do, I wonder that you feel that the POV tag should be returned to the Christianity article. With all due respect to you as a fellow editor I would ask if you would specify what needs to change in the article in order for it to avoid the singling out of the red flag. drboisclair 16:09, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Christian Control

Of course they do, because they care about it more than the rest of us. Not many, myself included, are willing to spend the time it takes to NPOV the article. However, I am willing to defend Hermeticism to the death. They constantly throw out non-applicable policy thanks to Musical Linguist who is an administrator. Str will make multiple reverts and never be reported for doing so.

However, in the end, I don't see a problem of there being an excessively Christian POV, there is some whitewashing (why there was talk about persecution by the Chinese govt, but not the persecution of, say, witches, alchemists, and Native Americans is beyond me), but that doesn't hide the greatest problem. They wish to define Christianity as merely being the religion of the victors, as what it is now, and not as what it meant in all ages. It has a time era bias, if you will. I feel that the article treats those long lost branches of Christianity as false doctrine specifically, and in impingement of what I feel they would call the religion of Hereticism (note this is not a typo, it's making "heretic" into a religion). Another problem is that they don't truely work by consensus, or arguments of NPOV.... it truely is a democracy of a sort....... or at least while they have more members. The effort for NPOV tends to be an attempt for a balance between the versions of Str1977 and Tom Harrison, not the full spectrum.

I have seen some pretty crazy actions...... such as Musical Linguist reverting my ^{[citation needed]} tags and roundabout suggesting that my adding them (in the face of four citations, I believe all of them dealing with numbers) as being vandalism. If someone asks for a fact to be proven, you prove it or leave it there. ^{[citation needed]}ing isn't vandalism, it's an honest attempt to enforce Wikipedia:Verifiability. I certainly didn't go one way with my verification tags. Yet, when I am outnumbered in the addition of disagreement over Jesus being fully God and man.... noting Arianism (and not Gnosticism as Str suggested that I noted) disagreed.... the consensus arriving at the fact that the section was not to highlight disagreements. Seeing this, I decided to remove all such disagreements from that section, and was accused of using Wikipedia to prove a point. The policy in question, is not a policy anyways, as the page clearly states "This page is considered a guideline on Wikipedia. It illustrates standards of conduct, which many editors agree with in principle. Although it may be advisable to follow it, it is not policy."

Did I use Wikipedia to prove a point? That wasn't my intention, but I wasn't about to let POV sink in and let the rest get coverage with their disagreements, but leave the once prominent and influential Arianism aside. The policy had to do with implementing new rules to prove them silly, whereas I implemented a consensus, the way I said I would, which got no disagreement, not a rule. I seem to have proved a point, without that being my purpose. I honestly thought that was what everyone was expecting, since I mentioned that specific fact when I was arguing with Str and waited about a week before doing anything! No one replied about that..... not a single one. Of course, it seems that they do think that consensus is more important than NPOV, and that means their majority and ability to pull in a meatpuppet when necessary (as I've seen administrators come in and revert without discussion to support the Christian view) whenever...... but the second someone does it for the other side, they don't bother to even get all the evidence they could easily get before calling it a sockpuppet and blocking for a violation of the 3RR. Musical Linguist pretty much refused to bother getting the Usercheck done, despite it being at her fingertips.

In the end, I suggest honest mediation.

KV 12:01, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm assuming that you're the one who mentioned the website to me....... if so my comments is that it needs to use some case examples looking at history and talk to explain what happened. This will display the bias. You could mention my attempt to add in ^{[citation needed]} wherever I could being called vandalism among them or Str1977's constant accusation of "relativist POV" which of course is NPOV.

KV 04:20, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I can only think of Giovanni and Alienus.

KV 17:37, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Response

I've listed some suggestions on various talk pages - by no means exhaustive lists, mind you, but some ideas. There are very few websites, in my view, that are of any scholarly worth. We may be moving into a new era in which that will change, but most sites - conservative, liberal, and everything in between - tend to be people without much academic credentials just sharing their points of view. Now, that's all well and good, but that doesn't make the sites authoritative or notable in any way, particularly for serious research.

Regarding other suggestions, it really just depends on the specific field. In the area of serious "Jesus research", for example, I would consider the Jesus Seminar (Borg, Crossan, et al), NT Wright, Schweitzer (quite dated but also quite notable), and EP Sanders to all be serious names. These are folks who publish in peer reviewed academic journals, have published works taken seriously by the academy, etc. They generally all come down with differing perspectives, obviously, but all are serious scholars (I'm making an assumption about the Seminar, of course, not knowing all members...but certainly the "main" folks are noteworthy). Does this help answer your query? KHM03 (talk) 20:26, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Compiling a list might not be a bad idea, but could be quite lengthy and time consuming. It might be easier to agree to criteria as to what makes a scholar a legitimate authority; the brief article Expert might be a place to start. Given that article, Crossan and Wright would be considered legitimate experts, but Gary Miller (currently under debate at the article Criticisms of Christianity) may not be. At any rate, it might be a place to start.

Your point is well taken regarding websites, particularly regarding minority viewpoints (you cited Arianism or Rosicrusianism) which may not be the subject of too many scholarly journals or books. In this instance, a case-by-case basis might be used. Again, though, in my view, most websites are lay written and lacking any real authority. Nothing wrong with the sites, mind you, but I just don't think they're on par with, say, Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God or the Seminar's The Five Gospels or an article published in a peer reviewed journal. Websites can say anything, correct or incorrect, and can be totally off the wall. There are lots of examples of this from folks on every side of every issue.

If we cite a site (not to be too Seuss-like) that criticizes (or supports) Christianity (or any subject, in my view), we ought to note that it's a non-academic lay site that may contain loads of inaccuracies and is non-peer reviewed and not posted by an authority or expert on the subject. This and this are guides for this kind of problem. KHM03 (talk) 17:48, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Expert: The idea of defining an expert sounds good, though I can forsee problems (eg if we agreed something like "an academic at any reputable university" then we might just open up questions about what a reputable university is). Still with a bit of goodwill we could try it and perhaps accumulate a list of "precedents" as we go. Any suggestions as to where to put it ?

Website: I think we'd all agree that really whacky sites have no place. The real question is what falls within the scope of reasonable comment. Eg I'd say that the on-line Catholic Encyclopedia is a reasonable source to cite (even though many non-Catholics regard it as laughably biased and demonstrably false). And I'd say the same about many non-Christian websites critical of Christianity (which many Christians might regard as laughably biased and demonstrably false). In my view both types of site are POV and there should be a consistent policy which either permits both (flagged as POV if people want to do that) or excludes both. As you've probably guessed, one of my underlying points is that there has been, and still is, a wild imbalance in many articles - one class is consistently included, the other consistently excluded.

A second point I'd make is that there should surely be some allowance for the subject of the article. For example in my view a website critical of Christianity would have to be positively libellous to justify the exclusion of a link to it from the "Criticism of Christianity" page. Whether such a website is scholarly is irrelevant, though the question of how commonplace its critism is might be. Comments on these two points appreciated. Trollwatcher 17:06, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm on an unofficial "wiki-break" right now and haven't been doing a whole lot on Wikipedia...Holy Week and Easter is a busy time for Christian clergy. I'll try and look at your suggestions in the next few days; please don't think I'm ignoring you! Thanks...KHM03 (talk) 18:23, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]