User talk:David Finn/Archive1

Physical activity

Nice to see someone else editing physical activity. Aside from the clunkiness of my wording, looks like I was trying to reflect the National Library of Medicine definitions that distinguish physical activity from exercise. I think you are right that the WHO wording seems cleaner. Feel free to change and add, etc. - Robert Badgett 21:28, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I guessed that is what happened. I'll take a look at the article again presently, and thanks for getting back to me. David Finn 09:40, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks

David, thanks for the format help for Biolinguistics/Bibliography. Bedtime beckoned before I could finish. Nice of you to take on a tedious chore. Do you have an automated way to do it? Anthony.Sebastian 00:06, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

My pleasure, Anthony. I know precisely nothing about biolinguistics but the great thing about it being a wiki is that we can all help in little ways. I just copy/pasted the asterisk and went down the page adding it to each line. The hard work was already done by you, and thanks for being one of our top contributors. David Finn 08:59, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your support.

Mr. David Finn: Thanks for your words supporting the existence and the lack of racism in the "White Argentine" article. Anyway, I've realized that Citizendium has too many rules and laws that prevent more possibly interested users to contribute. I really had any racist idea when i wrote it, but these are times in which you are allowed to show/demonstrate your pride if you are Black or have Black African ancestry, or if you are Amerindian or have Amerindian ancestry. Nevertheless, if you are White or have European ancestry and demonstrate it, you are automatically labelled as "racist", "nazi", etc. Besides, there are other wikisites which have an article on White Argentines in them so, this is no great loss, especially for a wikisite which only has 15,000 articles. Again, I thank you for you selfless support and contribution to the discussion. Thanks.--Pablo Martín Zampini 19:35, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

You are very welcome Pablo. I'm only sorry that our efforts were unable to bring about a reasonable response from the other participants. Peter Jackson and I must have asked at least a half-dozen times for examples of what might be considered racism in the article, to no avail. I am sorry to say I do not think even one of them stopped to read the article, and all we got in return were some feeble excuses about whether race is a suitable topic for conversation.

Your article was opposed on ideological grounds - that is not the way to build an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia describes neutrally all that exists and is of importance, it doesn't choose which subjects to represent based on the ideological difficulties of its mainly white middle-class participants.

A real encyclopedia would approach the subject like so - first they would google the title of the article and see if the term is widely used. That being the case they would check the information in the article for accuracy. Then an "expert" would review the entire article for neutrality, at this point checking that the article as a whole is not misrepresentative.

At Citizendium did any of that happen? No. Some people who know little or nothing about the subject shouted "Racism!". Why? Some said that all articles with "White" in them were racist. Some said discussing race is racist! Some even said discussing race could lead to euthenasia (and no doubt genocide and a holocaust or two).

Alas Pablo you are dealing with a site that has some funny ideas. Here "experts" are given precedence yet are rarely expert in the specific subject matter they are commenting on. The "experts" also have no requirement to be capable of interating with other humans, nor any requirement that they do any work here at all. Unfortunately this means a lot of people with opinions they cannot and therefore will not back up with fact, evidenced by their general lack of using links to support their comments.

It is amusing to consider that many of those commenting on the article are white and middle class and old enough to have lived through periods of institutionalised racism in their own countries! This makes me think that the only racism in that article was to be found on the talkpage. This, as I am sure you know, is part of a wider Western racism, the kind that has been intitutionally racist, continues to be racist despite having dropped the racist policies, yet tries to stifle discussion of race (and down-play its own history) on the grounds of it being un-politically correct. In the olden days Westerners could be openly racist, nowadays in the spirit of political correctness they simply deny that there could be such a thing as racism and therefore we can't discuss the subject of race. Meanwhile the rest of the planet continues to suffer from the institutionalised racism. Try getting a fair price for your produce if you are African!

You will know that in the USA one of the census options under "race" is "white". Lets imagine that Joe the Plumber fills in his census form and realises the only option for him is "white". He researches the term "white American" and finds it has an official government use. He finds that the use of the term in government and the census has a history to it. He finds that "white American" is a term that is to be found in popular culture - with both positive and negative connotations. But Joe the Plumber is neutral on the issue. He writes an article called "White American" and neutrally describes the use of and the history of the term.

Lets say that Joe the Plumbers neighbour, who has identified as "African American" on the census, writes a long and neutral article on the word "nigger", and its history from the earliest times right up to its use in modern day music. It would even talk about Agatha Christies famous book, so it isn't like Citizendium has never used the "n word".

Do you think either of these articles would be considered any less "racist" by the good folk at Citizendium than "White Argentine" was? Do you think they would be any more likely to actually read the article text rather than simply rejecting the articles on ideological grounds? That should be the difference between writing an encyclopedia and writing a propoganda manual and I don't think Citizendium succeeds.

You are sadly right about the rejection of the article being no big loss to the world - statistics show that the only people using this site are the few contributors left, which means nobody would have ever seen your article. This is because we have an ideological hardcore of contributors who contribute little but have frightened off everyone else. However, if we ever get enough contributors to make the site worthwhile we should also then have a higher number of people actually willing to do some research. Should that happen the opinions of the ideological hardcore would be less overpowering. So take heart Pablo - right now this site may not be worth contributing to, but if it ever becomes so it will be because there are enough people here to genuinely evaluate your article. They may still reject the article, I'm not saying it was perfect, but at least they would be able to give you a better reason than any you have received so far! David Finn 07:37, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

There appears to be a common thread here. D. Matt Innis 02:19, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Interesting you should mention Agatha Christie's book, as it's now been renamed. On the otehr hand, Joseph Conrad's book hasn't. Class discrimination? Peter Jackson 11:09, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

As one of those criticized I think I should reply here (briefly):

(a) The principal reason why this article was removed so quickly was its nature as an import present at several other places.

(b) Pablo, I did neither call you a "racist" (I do not know you) nor the article itself. I only said that it has "racist bias".

(c) An encyclopedia must not be based on Google results as you suggest, David. But, of course, I did some research, and since "White Argentine" is indeed commonly used I wanted to retain a page with this title. The research also showed that it is a problematic phrase that -- as Pablo wrote himself -- is not used in Argentinia. This view was strongly confirmed by Joe Quick.

(d) All the topics treated on the page may (and should) be treated in CZ articles, but in another context. This would be my opinion even without any reference to a bias or a lack of neutrality.

(Pablo, please allow a question: In what sense and why is colour -- White or Black, or ... -- something one can be "proud" of? It is no achievement! Of course, one must not be ashamed of one's ancestry, either.) --Peter Schmitt 22:16, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Inactive editors

Argh, there was always going to be an error somewhere in those messages... thanks for catching it. John Stephenson 04:40, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

For all the work you did having one letter out of place is nothing, well done. David Finn 07:17, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Please be civil

I've noticed several comments on several talk pages in which your tone appears to be disingenuous. They seem to be looking for trouble where no trouble exists. As a constable, I would appreciate seeing that you can make constructive comments without finding a way to insinuate that someone, somewhere else, is at fault for neglecting some sort of duty. This is a volunteer project and I fear that you're comments are not resulting in stimulating participation, but mostly driving members out. If you really want to see this project succeed, try some positive reenforcement. Thanks, D. Matt Innis 18:32, 25 January 2012 (UTC)