On 22 Oct 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
James-
What I tried to achieve was a biographical
article on MT that covered both
her positive and negative image and reputations, with the massive detail
added in by Eloquence put in a separate page called [[Criticisms of Mother
Teresa]]
That was a clear violation of NPOV. We do not split away criticisms just
because the person is question is considered a "saint" by some. You did
not bother to write as much as an edit comment for your massive changes,
let alone announce them in advance. I tried repeatedly to reach consensus
with you on this, you refused and insulted me instead (and still do).
It sounds like perfectly POV to me. POV is to mention the pro and the con
sides, without giving preference to either. POV is not just about mentioning
facts. It is also about which facts to mention
/Mother Teresa
with Charles Keating, convicted of fraud in the Savings and
Loan scandal and sentenced to 12 years in prison. Mother Teresa received
over a million dollars in donations from him, which she did not return after
the conviction. She did, however, send a plea for clemency to Keating's
trial judge/
That is a perfectly neutral description of what happened. There are plenty
of precedents for having comprehensive image captions that do more than
just say "Mother Teresa, left, with Charles Keating, right", e.g. [[Donald
Rumsfeld]]. It should be possible for a casual reader to get the necessary
information what an image is about and why it is reproduced by reading the
caption. Take a look at any electronic encyclopedia that has space for
captions, and you will notice that the exact same style is used.
To be honest, when I read this caption, my reaction would be - so what? Is
this really such an important thing that it belongs on the page at all, let
alone be repeated another time in the caption? And in my opinion it is the
Donald Rumsfeld caption that should be shortened, not the Mother Theresa one
that should not be.
You keep repeating this, but it does not become any
more true when you do
so-- of course opposition to abortion and contraception is the official
line of the Roman Catholic Church. Obviously, however, not every Roman
Catholic in a position of power and influence shares that position. MT
would have been in a perfect position to challenge papal authority on
these matters, instead she contributed to this deadly campaign that is
taking a toll among millions of people -- often by lobbying various
governments for harsher laws against both abortion and artificial
contraception. That is what the critics complain about, and that view of
course needs to represented in an article about MT.
I disagree. Giving her view on abortion is probably on-topic, but saying
that others say she should have another opinion is not. Just like we do
not give the reasons for the American attack on Iraq in the [[Jacques
Chirac]] article.
Andre Engels