Wikipedia talk:Criticism
Uncriticizable
How do you criticize basketball, alphabet Q or color blue? Personally, I think NPOV is more or less a lousy joke. Now you can criticize me. -- Toytoy 07:02, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
Two proposals
I don't understand. #2 seems to contradict #1, and I have a hard time understanding #2. -- Samuel Wantman 07:25, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
- These are two contradicting theories. Theory 1: Every article shall criticize itself. Theory 2: Let other articles practice criticism. -- Toytoy 07:46, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
Repetition of criticism
- ... criticisms of Christianity do not belong in the article on Christianity, but in the articles of Christian-critical groups and concepts.
OK, there are thousands of groups who do not like Christianity one way or another. Most of them share some similar ideas, such as "There shall be more than one Gods." Are we going to duplicate the same words over and over in multiple articles?
Many groups who thinks otherwise are seeing Christianity their biggest enemy. A geologist may not agree with the Big Flood. However, it seems stupid to say "This guy does not believe in Noah's flood." in each geologist's article. It is a joke to write an article about bicycles and keeps telling readers bad things about cars, ships, airplanes, spacecrafts and feet.
People who are critical to Christianity may also against many other non-related ideas. You don't want to write an article where 95% of the words are used to say "He does not like capitalism, femminism, Christianity, mathematics, Nazism, salty food, Macintosh computers, witch hunting, cats, 1+1=2, paleontology, child abusing, blood transfusion, fossil fuel, antibiotics, farmers, Washington Post, anyone who has more than two vowels in his/her name, his mother's pasta ... ." -- Toytoy 08:00, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
- Thanks for commenting. What would be a better wording? You obviously have ideas about where criticism doesn't belong, and the point of all this is to make those possibly common-sense ideas explicit guidelines.
- One could argue that NPOV requires any lengthy article on a person or major concept to include a section criticizing that concept or person's efforts or actions, as most neutrally toned articles include mostly positive information. For example, Igor Stravinsky contains all sorts of information about Stravinsky's relatively succesful career, such as his credentials, most inherently positive. Thus balance requires an opposing view or opposing views. Hyacinth 08:23, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Uncriticizable
I don't think either proposals are doing any good here. Why does an NPOV article need a criticism section, when there's nothing or almost nothing to criticise about it? And even when there's someone who has some criticism about a certain topic, do we need to support extreme minority views just because they're the only ones complaining? I also agree with Toytoy, how should "Criticism of Helium" and "Criticism of Tea" look like? They're both featured articles. The second proposal is also not a good idea IMHO, criticism of copyright exists and should stay there. Just my 2 cents. --Conti|✉ 11:08, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)
- Okay, what's the opposite of these two bad policies? Apparently it would make one good one. Hyacinth 23:51, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- Change vote to neutral. I've just gone over it again, and have made more changes. I think it reads better now, but someone else should read it again I feel. Also, the more I read it, the more the article reads like a eulogy. I think there must have been (and remain) critics of Stravinsky's work who should be given greater voice for the sake of NPOV. Lupin 12:50, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- I don't think that there is a respectable view that he was a bad composer. (Some people don't like his music, but that's not the same thing as it being bad.) We don't need to mention in every composer's article that some people might not care for his stuff. Markalexander100 02:50, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
posted here by Hyacinth 23:49, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC), see Igor_Stravinsky#Criticism. Hyacinth 19:13, 21 July 2005 (UTC)