[Wikipedia-l] Re: MT and pro-Catholic bias

Tue Oct 21 22:26:06 UTC 2003

>From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
>Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: MT and pro-Catholic bias
>Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 15:39:08 -0600
>
> >~S~
> >How would Internet-Encyclopedia handle this
> >controversy?
>
>The main article would be postive point of view, but note that there are
>criticisms and set them forth briefly. Criticisms, if set forth in detail,
>would be in an article entitled Mother Teresa:A critical view. That article
>would be required to note her beatification and probable sainthood and the
>basis therefore
>
>Fred
>

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]], it being replaced by a short summary in the main article, with a 
link to the other article. That would allow a balanced, fair article on MT 
and a detailed linked article that could be linked to other pages also. 
Eloquence simply deleted and reverted. Instead of a balanced readable 
article, he insisted on captioning photos with long long text lines to 
repeat claims already covered in the main article. For example,

/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/

All this was already covered, but was repeated in a 5 line caption that 
could have been summarised in 10 words, any attempt to make standard short 
captions was met with revertions and cries of censorship.

The scale of accuracy in the article on occasions was reflected by the 
statement:

Her (MT's) view that abortion is immoral even in cases of rape and incest is 
rigid even by Catholic standards

As anyone who knows anything about the teachings of various religions on 
abortion, or who has followed the abortion debates for longer than 5 minutes 
knows, the above view is the /standard/ RC view, not a right wing fringe 
view.

The article needs major work in terms of
- structure
- layout
- editing
- factual accuracy
- NPOV
- encyclopædic standards.

Yet attempts to do so have been met by Eloquence by reversions and by 
demands now that I be banned, all for trying to turn an embarrassing POV 
mess (the criticism section of the article covers 70% of the text, 90% of 
the headlines, most of the pictures and most of the reading list!) into a 
standard encyclopædic article that covers the positive and negative 
perspectives on MT, that avoids POV language (from the pro-MT 'revered' to 
the anti-MT editorialising about one of the book Eric based his 20K text on 
- "probably the most comprehensive critical analysis of Mother Teresa's life 
and work to date") and produces a standard encyclopædia article. The result 
has been Eric attacks on some people on the reading list, on Dante when he 
tried to act as mediator and on me for an imagined 'pro-catholic bias'. The 
irony was I only went to the page in the first place to add /in/ criticism 
of MT, because I presumed the article would be a one sided glorification of 
her.

JT

PS: Thank you, everyone, for the emails. I appreciate them.

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