User:Pmanderson/CC

When I first came to the page, some months ago, its talkpage was a clubhouse for expressing sectarian political and theological opinions:

• May I also point out that when the Orthodox Church Split from the Supreme Authority of Rome, it lost all rights to claim the name is previously had as Catholic Church. (addressed to an Orthodox editor).
• Blame those subversives who ignited the French Revolution for the Church currently not having the correct amount of influence over temporal affairs.
• There's no such thing as "Christian" anti-Semitism.

History2007 called Xandar, who wrote the last, mayor of the article.

Several editors see anti-Catholic proganda where there isn't any: Johnbod accused an editor of saying that "Spain" and "Spaniards" are "cruel" and "fanatical", with those quotation marks - when he had said nothing of the kind, and indeed used none of those four words. His explanation above leaps from "Taam dislikes the article Black Legend" to "Taam supports the view condemned in the first sentence of Black Legend", without a shadow of justification. Whoever is not with us is against us. This binary thinking may well be the basic problem; it is neither sensible nor logical - and it is heresy.

But Nancy is the worst. Her RFC shows being abusive, to new and old editors alike for years. Consider this request for comment which she proposed:

Our article text, the one that has gone through several FACs and peer reviews, states in the lead and in Origins and Mission section that there are different opinions among scholars regarding the Church origins. WP:NPOV requires us to present these views giving each side equal weight. We have done this but some editors here are saying that there are no historians that agree with the Catholic POV on the origin of the Church even though we have included three sources in the article to support this POV. I have also provided some more sources on the talk page above. See [13] and [14]. Because Karanacs and Richard are eliminating our consensus text in favor of hiding these important facts, I would like to have a vote here to see what true consensus decides.

Please vote Support if you favor our consensus version of text or Oppose if you would like to eliminate these facts altogether.

Consensus text is here: (third lead paragraph and second para in Origins and Mission)[15]

This is what happens when we lose the consensus text [16]

Please note that this does not state what the actual issue is. Instead it appeals to "the Catholic point of view", and to "consensus" without any evidence that Nancy's unstated position is the Catholic point of view, and with no evidence that it was ever consensus. (Her position was unsupported by any source, including the Catholic Encyclopedia; but that is an issue to be brought up in evidence.) Nevertheless, several editors voted for it.

I think a fair example of the conflicting standards here can be seen at Talk:Catholic_Church#World_War_II. ): Nancy and Xandar regard pro-Catholic statements as neutral, and object to their removal as anti-Catholicism.

Again, when Richard S. requested removal of a sentence, or at least a {{cn}} tag, because the sources cited did not say what our article did (and got support). Xandar objected, claiming that the proposal was solely because certain editors had not fully studied the issue. It is at that point I called him a liar - because he had just lied about the statements on the page he was editing.

Xandar and Nancy should be removed from this article for a period of time (three to six months), not as punishment, but to permit the subject experts, whom they have driven away from it, to edit and correct it. The people who voted for Nancy's vacuous poll should be reminded that Wikipedia is not a battleground.

This is not my field; I was drawn into this because my opinion was asked on a question of principle underlying the naming dispute, and because the article is tendentious and nonsensical where it does cross my field. However this comes out, I expect to leave until that rewrite is done. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:14, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Please do not refactor this; editing suggestions welcome. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:30, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Comment on tags.

The article is over 180K; its POV has been being disputed for months, if not years. If those are not conditions for general tags, what would be?

Whether the article is positive or negative is the wrong question; but whether the article reflects those points of view which are consensus in the sources. If it did, it might indeed be slightly positive, but this would be acceptable. But it doesn't; it is overwhelmingly defensive. On doctrinal issues, this is not even the "Catholic point of view"; it represents one point of view within Roman Catholicism. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:39, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Comment on involvement.

Str1977, Farsight001, and Student7 all voted for the "Catholic POV" RFC quoted above. Are they uninvolved? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:32, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

To SirFozzie

I expect that "two or three uninvolved admins" will be accused of anti-Catholicism and sucked in, just as Karanacs has. But then can 2 or 3 admins do anything about canvassing, and fraudulent use of bad sources? If they can't, and ArbCom won't, what is our remedy? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:32, 27 February 2010 (UTC)