[WikiEN-l] Mother Teresa article

Mon Oct 27 17:00:54 UTC 2003

>
>I must say, even though I'm personally rather fond of JT, I think he's sort 
>of dropped the ball here. I really think the best thing to do would have 
>been to accept Erik's peace offer, as it seemed very fair and sincere. I 
>hope he'll see that he's not really winning a lot of converts by being so 
>confrontational at this stage and pull back the reins a bit.

Let me clarify:

1. I am rather fond too of Dante! :-)

2. I have a lot of respect for Erik.

3. I do believe that on a few occasions (usually to do with religion) Erik 
loses all sense of judgment and, probably without realising it, produces 
edits that are glaringly POV.

4. I want to work with Erik.

5. IMHO Erik does have a habit of ignoring criticism of his work, of seeing 
agendas, or personalising criticism as attacks, etc.

6. On the page in question, Erik added in text with is seriously POV and 
unbalanced. I tried to NPOV the article while not censoring the allegations, 
by making a new article specifically focused on discussing the allegations, 
many of which are not directly about Mother Teresa, the focus of the 
original article. That article was to be linked to the main one, with a 
summary of the allegations, focusing on those centred on MT, contained in 
the main article. (Interestingly, a couple of people, unaware that this was 
originally attempted a week ago, are suggesting that as the obvious 
solution.) However Erik went ballistic, reverted, listed pages on the VfD, 
talked about bans, accused me of censorship and a 'pro-Catholic' agenda. 
Since then many users have come to the talk page and said that there /is/ a 
clear problem with the MT page as edited by Erik. People other than me have 
talked about POV, agendas, lack of balance, etc. Some have observed that the 
MT article carries more extreme criticism than in articles on Hiter and Idi 
Amin! Erik has ignored all the criticism and focused his attacks on me. I 
have not edited the page in days, but to clarify for the community what is 
the problem and what is the proposed solution, called a vote. Erik tried to 
move the questions, change the questions, dispute the terminology, add in a 
900th repeat of his constantly repeated defence (ok, 900th is an 
exagguration but you get the point) all about censorship, etc (bizarrely 
linking in Pol Pot in the debate!).

To set up the vote, I left messages on plenty of talk pages, including 
people who agree with Erik. I left messages on the Village Pump and here. In 
other words, while Erik has been talking about working with people, I have 
been doing it; trying to NPOV a poor article, trying to get a debate, trying 
to set up a vote to clarify what the community want. I have been seeking a 
community consensus. Erik has been trying to get people to accept what he 
wants.

But I have a lot of respect still for Erik. I do want to work with him. But 
it is difficult when, on topics touching his pet topic, his dislike of 
religion, he lets his personal opinions blind him to the NPOV requirement. 
/If/ I was a catholic apologist, I would have deleted Erik's controversial 
stuff, not given it its own linked article. On [[Pope Pius XII]] I would not 
have dug up a quote from Hitler to a cabinet meeting that supports Erik's 
thesis.

My bottom line is ensuring that articles are NPOV and encyclopædic. And all 
that I have done is to ensure that. I just wish that Erik would show the 
same neutrality and concern with NPOV. That he holds strong opinions is his 
right. But he needs to avoid pushing those agendas in a 'case for the 
prosecution' style that makes articles 70% accusationary (another 
contributor suggested 80%). There is no point Erik talking peace if he 
insists it is a peace based on getting his way, when most people have been 
repeating over and over again 'this article has a POV problem'.

wikipeace

JT

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