User talk:AP295

thank you

Thanks for spotting META:Requests for comment/Violating the Neutral point of view in Arabic Wiki. It'll take me a while to read, but I am curious if you are going to be posting this topic on the ucoc discussion here at foundation. Unfortunately I am blocked at META (and many others too) so cannot participate in discussions there. Ottawahitech (talk) 23:53, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

"but I am curious if you are going to be posting this topic on the ucoc discussion here at foundation." Why would I do that? I didn't post the RFC to begin with, I only obliged the request for comments. Being somewhat tired at the moment, I'm struggling to come up with a glib summary of the RfC for you. The complaint against arwiki is more than a bit loony, and that's putting it charitably. Morally bankrupt is the phrase that comes to mind, though with the proviso that I cannot read Arabic. I suppose I should say something about it in the policy discussion though. A few editors in the RfC have dolled out the usual round of thought-terminating clichés. I don't mean to make it look like that's stopping me. Rather, I haven't the energy for it right at the moment. AP295 (talk) 16:52, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

re: "I haven't the energy for it right at the moment."

Tell me about it! I am also going through something similar. I guess we all do. I miss your fiery attitude at wikiversity. Hope you recover soon.

btw I did not see your response until now, even though I have been checking this page periodically. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:12, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech: There's also this RfC. Remarkable how easily the dubious principles of "neutrality" and "consensus" are abused in order to confect such rhetoric, isn't it? AP295 (talk) 01:44, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

I've had this thought for some time now. Part of what enables this is that on wikipedia and other wikimedia projects, the concepts "neutrality" and "consensus" are applied as aphorisms or dogma. It's entirely well and fine to say that encyclopedic articles should be objective and unbiased. Yet "neutral" is not a perfect substitute for "unbiased" or "objective". It does get the point across e.g. as in w:WP:NPOV but words like "objective" or "unbiased" would do just as well in that case. I get the sense that "neutrality" is more easily abused, for instance, to enforce a sort of apolitical quietism and this works all the better when the term "neutrality" is aggrandized and treated as a principle (aka "fundamental pillar" or "one of the five pillars" or some such shamanism). Such appeals to "neutrality" are really just question-begging nonsense. AP295 (talk) 02:39, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

As an example unrelated to those RfCs, consider v:Wikidebate/Guidelines. I wrote a critique of the wikidebate guidelines (which is unfinished and really just a set of notes, but should suffice to explain the problem with wikidebates). As another example, I suggested that wikinews allow editorials, and "non-neutrality" seems to be the basis for most of the objections [1]. Presumably most newspapers and online news organizations include editorials, why not wikinews? I could probably find more examples (or better examples) of circular arguments involving NPOV, but you get the point. The RfC makes it particularly apparent how facile, absurd and morally/intellectually vacuous such arguments can be, and while the RfCs don't seem to have much momentum at present it's perhaps also worth considering the many lesser instances where "neutrality" is used rhetorically. "Look to the language", Hitchens often advised on the matter of propaganda. Not being a writer, nor a linguist, nor multilingual, I've found it challenging to describe the problem in precise terms but I'm getting there, hopefully. AP295 (talk) 04:32, 28 March 2024 (UTC)