Talk:Constitution of the United States
On the description of the 13th amendment:
It appears to me that the text "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted" can equally well be taken to refer to "slavery and involuntary servitude" and to "involuntary servitude" alone. Historically this exception appears to have been used in order to allow prison work, which surely falls under the rubric of "involuntary servitude" rather than slavery. Moreover, the Supreme Court has established many times that the amendment "abolishes slavery" in no uncertain terms. Some of the quotes are here: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate/constitution/amdt13.html Therefore, I think it justified to simply say that the amendment abolishes slavery.
Comments? --AV
I hadn't thought of the other interpretation. Too bad they didn't have wikipedians around to say "but hey, it could have this second unintended meaning too." --KQ
I would like to see a list of failed ammendments -- proposed ammendments which were proposed by Congress but never recieved the requisite number of ratifications from the states. The second extra ammendment contained in the Bill of Rights would be one important one (I keep on hearing it mentioned, but never what it said). Another quite important one would be the Equal Rights Ammendment. I'd probably forget about ammendments which failed at the stage of Congress though -- simply because there are thousands of them (ammendments to abolish the electoral college, to reinstitute official prayers in public schools, etc.) -- SJK
Failed ammendments - http://www.usconstitution.net/constam.html#process
http://www.law.emory.edu/FEDERAL/usconst/notamend.html
I note that Constitution of Canada has gone on the chopping block due to it being just a source text ported over to Wikipedia. I agree with this verdict, I've campaigned vociferously against source texts myself in other places. However, as a good red-blooded Canadian, I feel it is my duty to put United States Constitution up for the same treatment. Fair's fair, after all. :) Since this page gets linked to more frequently, though, I don't want to just go in and clear out great swaths without warning or consultation. Anyone have any comments or suggestions before I convert the US constitution to external links? Bryan Derksen, Friday, June 14, 2002
- Go for it. Vicki Rosenzweig, Saturday, June 22, 2002
- I strongly disagree. If it's put into the Wiki in such a way that context can be added, then it's a good thing to have the source text as well (note, for example, the Twelfth Amendment article). I also think the Canadian Constitution should be in Wikipedia as well. Any decent encyclopedia includes the full text of at least the U.S Constitution. RobLa, Saturday, June 22, 2002
- The problem--other than the imbalance of chopping the Canadian constitution but keeping the US--is that *everything* here can be edited. That makes the Wikipedia a poor location for any source text--someone looking up the text of the US constitution needs to know that they're going to see the precise document, not something someone fiddled with because the commas in the Second Amendment don't work by 21st century standards, or something with a line missing because someone got careless. Or, worse, someone decided they disagreed with the people who wrote the thing, and took it on themselves to leave here what they think our constitution should be. Vicki Rosenzweig, Saturday, June 22, 2002
- I also concur -- source texts like these are useless unless the reader can be reasonably sure that what is on the screen is actually what the original authors wrote. Small selections that are commented on are fine entire documents are most certainly not appropriate -- this is especially important with legal documents. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that tollerates some almanac-type list information, it is not a library. Rob, please see what wikipedia is not number 12 and also some comments at talk:Macbeth. --maveric149
- The problem--other than the imbalance of chopping the Canadian constitution but keeping the US--is that *everything* here can be edited. That makes the Wikipedia a poor location for any source text--someone looking up the text of the US constitution needs to know that they're going to see the precise document, not something someone fiddled with because the commas in the Second Amendment don't work by 21st century standards, or something with a line missing because someone got careless. Or, worse, someone decided they disagreed with the people who wrote the thing, and took it on themselves to leave here what they think our constitution should be. Vicki Rosenzweig, Saturday, June 22, 2002
Cunctator has developed some ideas on separate project to handle the wikification of source texts, and I added a few thoughts. If anyone's interested, check out m:Project Sourceberg (his name, not mine ;-) over at the meta. --Stephen Gilbert
- No need for to go through the trouble of having a separate project. What is needed is separate namespace that has special default properties -- such as only being able to be edited by "trusted hand" or greater users and be able to be called upon by other articles with the following or similar syntax: [[source:Origin of Species/Chapter 1{1-15}] (where "1-15" are line numbers) and also serve as stand-alone wikified texts. Of course, there would have to be strongly enforced policies to only correct OCR errors and to wikify the text. See my idea at wikipedia:feature requests. --maveric149
Personaly, I (and others, based on comments on the Sourceberg page) don't think that primary sources are well suited for permanent wiki life. Once they are corrected and linked to articles, there's not need to keep them in an editable state. Also, I think it's important to for the Wikipedia project to remain focused on producing encyclopedia articles. Inputing, correcting, and linking source texts, while very interesting and useful, doesn't full under that mandate. I think, if enough people are interested, that the wikification of sources is best left to a closely related but separate sister project. --Stephen Gilbert
I've redirected all the original-text pages here, except for United States Constitution/Article One, which is protected. Can any sysop help me with redirect that to this page? jheijmans, Friday, July 19, 2002
In the process of making this (IMHO, ill-advised) change, some original explanatory text from the 12th amendement article was removed. Additionally, links are being redirected to this general, and less useful page. For example, if someone is specifically interested in the 12th amendment, they are now redirected to the U.S. Constitution page, whereas before, they actually got the 12th amendment and historical context. sigh.
Here's the text, in hopes that someone figures out how to integrate it.
- This amendment was motivated by the Presidential election of 1800. Prior to ratification of the Twelfth Amendment, votes for President and Vice President were not listed on separate ballots. Thomas Jefferson and his running mate Aaron Burr tied in the number of electoral votes received, neither receiving a majority of votes. The House of Representatives voted over thirty times to a tie vote before a deal was struck and Jefferson was elected.
- The amendment itself was a subject of a constitutional dilemma. On June 15, 1804, the amendment received the constitutionally-required ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures when New Hampshire ratified the amendment. However, on June 20, the Governor of the state vetoed the amendment. Since the Constitution doesn't mention anything about governors, it's questionable whether their veto matters. The issues was resolved when Tennessee ratified the amendment on July 27, 1804.
-- RobLa July 20, 2002
Cunctator, please look at What wikipedia is not # 12:
- "Mere collections of public domain or other source material; such as entire books, original historical documents, letters, laws, proclamations (...)"
Please restore the previous status. Jeronimo 11:19 Aug 10, 2002 (PDT)
- jheijmans, the amendments are of enough historical signicance to have their own pages. Whether or not the source text is quoted on them is less of a concern (they are short enough that it doesn't do harm), but they all have histories associated with them. As you can see from this long talk thread, I was pretty upset to see the amendments get redirected, and was quite relieved to see Cunctator's action. -- RobLa
- Maybe the US constitution is interesting enough for an encyclopedia article, but who guarantees the page is not edited here at Wikipedia? Just because the constitution is not copyrighted, there's no need to paste it in. Instead, it would be far more interesting to read about the meaning of the constitution to the country, the people, the world; its history and evolution.
I will restore the redirect version when I have the time for it. Jeronimo 11:19 Aug 10, 2002 (PDT)
- You aren't getting it, are you? There is no justification for having an article about the 12th amendment redirect back to a general page about the constitution. None. This isn't about having source text or not, it's about whether or not the amendments deserve separate articles. -- RobLa
- How about if I remove the text from each amendment page, leaving a link to http://www.archives.gov/exhibit_hall/charters_of_freedom/constitution/constitution_transcription.html and a stub describing the basic gist of the amendment's content? I don't know a lot about the history of the various amendments, and their detailed implementation throughout history, so that would be left to future editors to flesh out. Bryan Derksen 16:36 Aug 10, 2002 (PDT)
- That sounds good to me Bryan. The amendments shouldn't be in an editable state and we accomplish nothing by being yet another mirror for them. We are making an encyclopedia here. --mav
- Hey, I want the text there. It's not like it's a burden, and it's very useful. And I dare you to find a paper encyclopedia that doesn't include any excerpts from major documents. --The Cunctator
Excerpts are fine. At issue here is if the entire text should be in here --- which is a public editable website. The text is worthless without some reasonable assurance that it is exactly the same as the original. Therefore the stubs and external links. --mav
- This sort of thing has been discussed lots of times in the past, see WikiBiblion and associated talk for example. Obviously, I agree with Maveric here. Bryan Derksen
- Obviously I agree with RobLa here. There's plenty of a reasonable assurance that the text is exactly the same as the original. Find the differences. It's not like someone can sneak in changes. --The Cunctator
- Looks like the Cunctator is willing to fight this edit war longer than I intend to stay up tonight. But unless someone comes up with some good reason for this particular source text to be left in Wikipedia while all the others are being removed, I'll resume work on it again later. Bryan Derksen
- Same here. Let him have it for another day. Perhaps the extra time will give him some time to cool off. I have more interesting things to do right now than fight an edit war. --mav
- Looks like the Cunctator is willing to fight this edit war longer than I intend to stay up tonight. But unless someone comes up with some good reason for this particular source text to be left in Wikipedia while all the others are being removed, I'll resume work on it again later. Bryan Derksen
- Obviously I agree with RobLa here. There's plenty of a reasonable assurance that the text is exactly the same as the original. Find the differences. It's not like someone can sneak in changes. --The Cunctator
i have problems with ppl redierecting mainly accents problems i moved zaire to zaïre and then someone whosae name will nto be mentioned puts it the other way round because ppl wright zaire in links and things but it would still redirect them to the right page. o well i just have to go with out putting accents on the main article :-s - fonzy and my persanol opion abou this is that it looks fine as it is. leave it. it gives good enough information and easy to use.