User talk:NickCT: Difference between revisions

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Archive I: Aug, 2009- Jul, 2010

can you review Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2010_August_3#Template:List_of_Colors and see if you still agree to keep? Dicklyon (talk) 04:24, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please read WP:NPOV and do not re-add the tag. If you still have concerns, raise them on the talk page. Johnbod (talk) 15:33, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

		The Barnstar of Neutrality
		For working hard to keep bias out of the encyclopedia. --Noleander (talk) 20:11, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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So kind Noleander! Thanks v. much. NickCT (talk) 21:52, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Current consensus seems to be to move the article to Israel and Apartheid with an appropriate disambiguation line to prevent any misinterpretations. Please weigh in over the next few days. --Ludwigs2 17:13, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please see here [1]: a fork of Template:Muslims and controversies footer . Thank you! Mootros (talk) 12:18, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You've been here a year now. This is wrong. If you hate Apples, you cant link "stupid" on the Apple article, see what I mean.

You can link things in See also only if they are directly related to an article and where you're not pushing a POV. You dont want people to start linking Criticism of Muhammad on every Muhammad related article, right? Its the same thing. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 00:43, 18 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Matt - Two points

I was trying to reflect views held by a number of groups (see [2],[3]).

The Central Committee for Ex-Muslims contends that European muslims are under threat of death if they consider abandoning Islam. If this isn't an islamophic argument, I'm not sure what is. Can you perhaps enlighten me as to what you consider Islamophobia? Or perhaps your POV is that it doesn't exist? NickCT (talk) 03:46, 18 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The same kinds of WP:OR arguements could be applied to defend the inclusion of a see also of Criticism of Muhammad at Military career of Muhammad, and all other Muhammad related articles (since a number of groups and people are critical of Muhammad). Do you agree we can have them there? And that death threat is not a "contention", its a fact, mentioned in sahih Hadith multiple times, you know that. Its not a matter of Islamophobia not existing, thats not the issue here. The issue is: If you're ok with Islamophobia being linked as a See also at that Council article, then you should also be OK with Muhammad's criticism being linked at all his articles. Agreed? --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 12:13, 18 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Matt57 - Sidebar perhaps. Footer no. As long as no footer exists for the other Abrahamic religions I can't help but feel that Islam is being singled out.

I wouldn't really oppose a sidebar, as it would be hard to argue that the Central Committee for Ex-Muslims isn't critical of Islam. However; I might offer one counter point, which is; should we put Criticism of Judiasm on Nazi? NickCT (talk) 12:40, 18 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What are you talking about? I'm not talking about a footer or sidebar. I'm talking about the See also section. Why should we not link Criticism of Muhammad at Military career of Muhammad, in the See also section? Or is that ok? Its KB, looks like. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 13:21, 18 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry. When I read "Criticism of" I assumed we were back to discussing the footer issue. I've reread your post. I think we really have to refer to RS on this matter. If you consider say Sherman's March; this is a subject about which there is a lot of contention in RS. Some arguing it was legitimate warfare, some arguing it was the first example of modern war crime. In cases where significant "criticism" of this nature exists in RS, it's probably OK to add "Criticisms of" in "see also".

So, to answer your point; I know little about the Military career of Muhammad, but if there is significant scholarly RS which is critical of his military career, than yes, Criticism of Muhammad would probably appropriate. NickCT (talk) 14:28, 18 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So your standard is if there is "significant scholarly RS which is critical" of the article topic, then we can link it in the See also section. So where's the "significant scholarly RS" that justifies you linking Islamophobia to Central Committee for Ex-Muslims? On a less-important note I find it funny you have an atheist userbox on your userpage but all of your edits are pro-Islamic / anti Islam-criticism.

To apply your other quote: "In cases where significant "criticism" of this nature exists in RS, it's probably OK to add "Criticisms of" in "see also".", you and I know that there is a tonne of criticism about Muhammad, from scholarly reliable sources (they're all reliable, otherwise that Criticism article cannot include that stuff), so it should be OK for us to link Criticism of Muhammad to all the article topics where he has been criticized. He has been called a warlord and pedophile, womanizer and so on (to sum up the reliable sources). So any article that has to do with these areas should link to the Criticism article, according to your logic here.

The point is, the same (faulty in my opinion and it shows WP:OR/Synthesis) reasoning you're applying to link Islamophobia on that Central Committee for Ex-Muslims can be applied to many other articles. Now to come back to another thing you said previously:

The Central Committee for Ex-Muslims contends that European muslims are under threat of death if they consider abandoning Islam. If this isn't an islamophic argument, I'm not sure what is.

For you to say that the statement "ex-Muslims are under a death threat" is Islamophobic and hence Islamophobia should be linked there, is WP:OR. You should know that because you've been here a while since 2007. We dont do anything that is OR. We only say what reliable sources say, directly. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 15:04, 18 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Matt57 - You've made a number of points. Let me try to address them 1 by 1

1) So where's the "significant scholarly RS" that justifies you linking Islamophobia to Central Committee for Ex-Muslims

The Central Committee for Ex-Muslims isn't really a well known organization. I think it probably just barely passes WP:NOTABLE. As a result I don't think the bar is very high on what might qualify as "significant". If I were to want to put Islamophobia in the "see also" section of The US Congress, I would have to provide more "significant" RS.

This is no criteria: "Central Committee for Ex-Muslims" is small so we can list the articles silly/crap over there. What I mean is this. Notability is only important when we're deciding to keep/delete an article. Linking Islamophobia as you did in the way and as you justified yourself is OR, as I explained. You have to 1) provide an RS 2) stay away from OR, no matter how big or small the subject of an article is.

2) atheist userbox on your userpage but all of your edits are pro-Islamic / anti Islam-criticism

(chuckle) - Are you implying I'm a secret Muslim? No. I am much very an atheist and happen to believe all religions are equally silly regardless of whether you're worshipping Yaweh, Ala, Jesus, Ganesha etc.... The keyword there though is "equal", and I approach WP with a strong emphasis on WP:RNPOV. I happen to think that WP suffers from a degree of systemic bias against Islam primarily as a result of the fact that there aren't many muslim editors, and there are a lot of editors who probably have latent predijuices against muslims. The "pro-Islamic/anti Islam-criticism" can probably be attributed to a desire to mitigate this systemic bias (be it real or percieved).

If you think they're all silly, you should do some anti-religion editing too. I did see one of them so I'll admit that. Anyway its still puzzling why most of them are pro-Islamic. But again this isnt important as compared to the other issues here. If you have a few good edits that are critical of Islam let me know. I didnt see your whole history in any case so I probably missed them.

3) I know that there is a tonne of criticism about Muhammad, from scholarly reliable sources

Again, I'm not much of a scholar on Muhammad, so I'll have to believe you. I would mention here though that obviously hundreds of thousands of RS exist that address Muhammad. If you can only present a handful that make the "warlord and pedophile, womanizer" assertions, I'm not sure that really qualifies as "significant". If on the other hand, there are dozens and dozens of RS making any one of those claims, than sure, add it under the "see also" section. I guess the point is, since Muhammad is such a widely known topic, the bar is quite high on level and quality of RS you must present to link under the "see also" section.

You have to believe me? Why dont you read the Criticism of Muhammad article to see how much he's been criticized? Once again its suspicious that you're minimizing the criticism and calling it "insignificant" at the same time you're professing to be an atheist. You did say that all religions including Islam are 'silly' so, I guess its ok.

But ok. I see your point. Yes Muhammad is a huge topic and so we must list only the biggest Reliable Sources there and so on. But again to come back to the topic, for you to say "They're claiming there's a death sentence, and I think thats Islamophobia and I'm going to link it there", is OR. This is the main topic of this whole discussion.

4) "ex-Muslims are under a death threat" is Islamophobic and hence Islamophobia should be linked there, is WP:OR. You should know that because you've been here a while since 2007. We dont do anything that is OR. We only say what reliable sources say,

Sure. But let me offer a few counterpoints. A) Like it or not, you can't completely banish an editor's judgement when making an article. WP:OR doesn't suggest an editor can't do things like categorizing based off his/her judgement. A lot of stuff which is obviously true isn't explicitly stated in RS, or isn't easily found in RS. Would you suggest that we should scower every article for "see also" links which RS might not exist for and erase them? Wouldn't you accept that there are probably a few "see also" links which are appropriate & accurate but might not have good RS to back them up? B) As I mentioned above, a couple groups have made the Islamophobia claim, so it's not like I'm pulling this from thin air. C) I'd still like to get your opinion on whether you think it level-headed and neutral to go around saying "European muslims kill people who try to leave their faith"? (note, obviously I realize your opinion constitute WP:OR, but humour me).

Alright, then. Is it OK for me to say this: "Quran contains violent verses (9:5, 9:29 etc) and so I should link Violence or Destructive cult there". I'm exercising my judgement here too, right? "A lot of stuff which is obviously true isn't explicity stated in RS, or isn't easily found in RS." <---- Dito. So lets link Violence at the Quran article.

Those couple of groups who made that claim of Islamophobia: What was the exact claim made? Who are these groups? Are they reliable sources? I can find 100 more groups that claim that Quran is full of violence. Do you get my point now.

"European muslims kill people who try to leave their faith" This is false. This is not what the article said. It said "Sharia schools say that they will kill the ones who leave Islam, Jami said.". I'll let you see what the differences are in those statements.

5) Thanks for the debate. While I think your reasoning is flawed and probably slightly predijuiced by religous sentiment, you points are at least cogent and your debate is dialectic (something that WP often so sorely lacks). NickCT (talk) 18:42, 18 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thats ok, thanks for calling my reasoning flawed. Allow me to say that actually its your reasoning that is flawed. Seeing that you like (dialectic) debate, hopefully you're fine with me being straight up with you. The problem again is your quote:

The Central Committee for Ex-Muslims contends that European muslims are under threat of death if they consider abandoning Islam. If this isn't an islamophic argument, I'm not sure what is.

So once again, for you to say that the above is an Islamophobic statement and then link it in the See also, is: 1) WP:OR 2) like me linking Violence in the Quran article because "If Quran 9:5 and 9:29 arent promoting violence towards non-Muslims, I dont know what is". Tell me why I would be wrong to link Violence at the Quran article.

I replied under your points if thats ok. This isnt a small problem. Your approach is problematic for all the edits you've done and are doing for Islam related articles. You have a severe anti Criticism-of-Islam attitude and thats ok, but you're injecting OR into articles, and thats not ok. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 16:09, 20 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]