User talk:Bellbird

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Welcome!

Hello, Bellbird, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  RJFJR 15:25, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Grigori Perelman

It is a good idea not to remove properly sourced material just because it conflicts with your POV. That conflicts with WP:NPOV and might even be construed as vandalism.--Runcorn 19:13, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] IP editors

IPs have just as much a right to contribute as anyone else under current policy. You have no right to tell them to stay out. Also, since you seem to be making nearly identical edits as an earlier user, under the assumption you are that user would you kindly stick to one account? Thank you. JoshuaZ 15:58, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Dear JoshuaZ:

I am not the other user you mention, whoever that may be. Bellbird 16:07, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Georg Cantor

We should just go by non-negotiable policy, such as WP:VERIFY, which specifies the use of secondary sources. If that is not acceptable, people can start their own fork if they want. Otherwise personal evaluations become OR and POV. I hope that helps. Tyrenius 17:26, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Policies

if it can be verified that X is a Catholic, yet X does not publicly identify as a Catholic (or X's Catholicism is irrelevant to the subject matter), then X's Catholicism is not mentioned.

Wrong. We don't just accept what the subject says about themselves, though this can also be included. We look at what secondary sources say about them. I George Bush says he is Australian, we would still say he is an American.

Irrelevant to the subject matter - if the individual is the subject matter then facts about the individual are relevant.

all have different standards on this. - then WP:NPOV insists that we do not make our own POV decision, but state what the different authorities say.

I think that covers it. I am not talking about categories. I am talking about description in the text.

Tyrenius 00:55, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I have never suggested forcing anyone into a religion. Please don't put words into my mouth or anyone else's. It's not a good way to resolve issues. Nor have I ever mentioned a Jewish nation. I am talking about family background, i.e. elements of culture. Judaism can be religion and/or culture. There are plenty of Jews (by family background) who are not religious.
If Germans claim General Kleber is a German, and this is stated in verifiable secondary sources, then this is a pertinent fact which should be mentioned, along with counter claims from elsewhere and any self-identification.
You seem to want to arrive at a definitive pronouncement and judge which of the claims should be used to the exclusion of the others. This is not how wikipedia works.
I agree not every claim by a secondary source should be used. Such claims should be used according to their importance and impact, and represented proportionately. The majority opinion should be stated as that, and any minority opinion given less weight and clearly indicated as a minority opinion.
As to whether the information is in the lead section, a category or in the main text, that has to be decided on a case by case basis, and from a NPOV. It seems that this issue is a contentious and emotional one, which can make that position difficult for some people. It is not such an issue for me.
By the way, you left your message by mistake on my user page, instead of my talk page.
Tyrenius 19:28, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Georg Cantor Again

Already an overflow of information on his seemingly irrelevant Jewish descent, and now further attempts are being made to attribute that he was somehow described as Jewish more often than not, even though from the apparent footnote, he never said he was Jewish. Also, You should check the history of the article form of Category:Jewish mathematicians. Your username is being signalled out but I have since removed that because it was WP:POINT. On discussion, I'd leave it clearly. LaGrange 16:40, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, was he described as Jewish more often than not? This is entirely different as to whether he himself said he was Jewish or not. Please try to differentiate between the two aspects and treat them accordingly. Otherwise it is muddled thinking. Tyrenius 19:30, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure why you're responding to my message to another user but ok. Furthermore no it's not. Unless somebody can unequivocally be proven as Jewish via descent, they are not Jewish unless they say they are. As far as I know, I've seen few if any reliable sources that explicitly call Georg Cantor "Jewish." but then again I'm not an expert on Georg Cantor. LaGrange 00:52, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jew(ish) or not to be

Wikipedia is not necessarily consistent across articles, or at least has not been in the past, though the Highways naming issue indicates it may be moving in that direction. Wiki works from secondary sources in a WP:NPOV and, where they contradict each other, wiki does not usually seek to judge in order to reach a conclusion, but states the different point of view, so the reader can see what is being said in order to form their own judgement. Jewishness is something that attracts emotional and partisan reactions, leading to POV editing, which is counter to wiki policies. If the policies are followed objectively, it usually makes the issue easy to resolve. What I see is people seeking to impose their own views on certain matters. This should be resisted. Tyrenius 12:26, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I think you're making heavy weather of it and straying into POV and OR. Just stick to the policies with VERIFY. Wikipedia reflects what's going on. If reputable sources say something, then wiki reflects it. If they choose to draw attention to e.g. someone's Jewishness, then that should be stated. If no one does, then it shouldn't. Tyrenius 15:06, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't do much with categories, so you'll have to correspond elsewhere for that. Try Runcorn. I'm more interested in the article text, although I have to confess very little interested in the subject under discussion. I think jinfo.org is not, from what you tell me, something that would be regarded as a reliable source. See WP:VERIFY and WP:RS, so could probably be strongly contested. You can of course always do a WP:CfD and see what happens.... Tyrenius 22:34, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I can't help you any further. It's not my field. However, I would caution you to work closely with other editors over such matters, and not make any sweeping unilateral actions about established practices. Tyrenius 19:59, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your ‘crusade’ against references to Jewishness

I am beginning to be rather concerned about your many edits removing ‘Jew’ and ‘Jewish’ related categories from articles. You do not even have a consistent reason. Sometimes you claim WP:BLP, which in and of itself is incorrect, otherwise the term “irreligious Jew” would be an oxymoron. Then you start removing the tag from dead people as well, such as George Pólya and Lise Meitner. On the latter, your edit summary is particularly disturbing. The only consistency in your actions and words that I have found, is that you have an issue with people being identified as “Jewish” on wikipedia, and there is something particularly disturbing about that fact, besides for which removing valid material from an article is always vandalism. I see no justification for such removal, from wither the living or dead, your arguments on the various talk pages notwithstanding. If you have a stronger argument, I would like to hear it; otherwise, please refrain from vandalising wiki articles in the future. Thank you. -- Avi 15:12, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

For a person who made this comment,[1], you sure haven't strayed from Wikipedia. Anyway, the bottom line is Bellbird, this is what's going to happen if this escalates - the usual CFD discussion, the usual debates between these sides (well, you read the January one, so you know what I mean) with absolutely nothing new brought to the table. For the most part, as you've already seen, few people except for a few extremists agree with you and this is unlikely to change in any future debates. In the end, absolutely nothing would have changed, except the time of me and many other users - ranging from IZAK to everyone debating this on Jewish mathematicians and so on - users who do very useful things here when they are not bogged down in this - would be wasted. So I just don't see the point, when the conclusion of this is so pre-determined, to conintue this whole " "Jewish" is a four-letter word" thing. Mad Jack 16:00, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
I have to come out strongly in support of Bellbird. I have not to date seen categories for Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or atheist. What is it about Jewishness that needs to be labeled? Just looking back at the recent and current history of persecution of Jews, then that type of branding can only be seen as divisive. Jews were tattooed during WWII to make them easily identifiable, and this has the same disturbing echo about it. Paul venter 14:42, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deletionism

Should we have cross-indexes for Jewish Bankers, say, or for Black Criminals, or for White people of Great Intelligence?

There are ways of classifying information that are simply not encyclopaedic (or civilized). The fact that tags can lend themselves to that is an argument against keeping such tags, not an argument in favour of keeping them.

Do you want to be classified? Bellbird 15:55, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

In theory, I do not have a problem with Jewish bankers. The latter category you bring is racially charged, and has its own issues that needs to be dealt with. And I know that Jews own the media, the banks, the seats of government, the press, and every third 7-11, but I do not think Jewish bankers would suffer from that the way "Bell Curve" related material would. But you would need to create Category:Bankers by religion first and then make a subcat. ;) -- Avi 16:02, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Oh, and check my user page, I am rather classified, by occupation and religion image:smile.gif -- Avi 16:02, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
"would you like an extremely rich label to be the first thing that a stranger finds about you"? Well, just so you know, ethnicity/religion is not supposed to be in the header of the article. So, i.e. Grigory Perelman, when his article said "Russian mathematician of Jewish origin", it should not have said that. The Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies) basically forbids any ethnicity from header, which I fully agree with and have been enforcing. However, there's simply no reason not to mention ethnicity at later points in the article if it has been mentioned in a reliable source. We certainly do it in a large number of bios and it is information reported by reliable sources. So I wouldn't call it "the first thing" mentioned in the article, just one of several other things (remember, "Russian", "Mathematician", etc. are labels too, and these are even allowed in the header). Mad Jack 16:15, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Meh, it's all fairly pointless and no big deal. If a reliable source said it, we can say it. That's really what it comes down to, and, in 2006, there is no reason not to mention someone's Jewishness, or Italian Americaness, etc. if we can verify it. In terms of inclusion in articles, there won't ever be a policy that forbids it because it seems to break the carnal rule that Wikipedia is not censored. As for your proposal for lists and categories to SlimVirgin, I'm automatically voting "Keep" on such nominations, until the day when ALL ethnicity/religion categories (yes, the Greek-Americans too) are nominated together. In fact, if I woke up one sunny morning and nominated the Greek, Greek-American and Greek-Orthodox (and all the other Greek-X categories and lists) for deletion, and then went around snuffing out mentions of the Greek descent of Americans from their articles because it may "inappropriately label" them, I would probably be blocked for disruption. So - Mad Jack 16:27, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
What the word "Jew" means compared to "Greek" is really a matter of one's opinion. I could easily make the claim that if we say someone is of Greek ancestry, a reader could assume they are Greek Orthodox and thus.... box them into a religion!! A person's reaction to all this probably says more about the person themselves then it does about what is stated. As for "Catholic because one of your ancestors was Catholic", that is a silly exaggeration (and besides, all that the article would say would be "Jack O'Lantern's grandmother was Catholic", which would be fact presumably, it wouldn't say "Jack O'Lantern is a Catholic"). If we strictly follow WP:V and WP:NOR, such things should not occur. Remember, Wikipedia is the messenger and we trust the (reliable) source to get it right (which I hope most of the time they do...) But certainly you can not have mentions in an article that an American is of Italian heritage but not mentions that they are of Jewish heritage. Definitely not fair. Anyway, I didn't want to get bogged down in a discussion and I doubt you will change your mind (I certainly won't change mine). What it comes down to are sources. So, for example, if you're displeased with the statement that "Grigory Perelman comes from a Jewish family" or you don't understand in what terms that Jewishness is defined, your case is probably with the Daily Mirror (I think it was) or whichever national newspaper made that information public. There's hardly point in concealing certain information that's been made public through a major newspaper. We're not journalists, just, so to speak, messengers. That's really all I can say about the subject. Mad Jack 16:43, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
The whole "Jewish mother" thing is a set of beliefs which many people, and certainly even many Jews, do not share. As I said, what a person makes of a "Jewish mother" mention says more about the person then it does about the article. If Wikipedia flat-out say "Person X is Jewish because their mother is", that may constitute original research if a source hasn't said it and thus be POV. But mentioning a biographical fact is blameless. We can't remove information from articles because of what a reader may make of it based on their own beliefs. Definite no-no if that's the reason. Otherwise we would have to, say, remove accusations of whatever crime from people's article because the reader may dislike the person because of them. The crucial thing with Wikipedia is reporting the facts as stated in the source. Certainly we don't write articles from the point of view of what a person may or may not think if they read the article. We just report. And to the reader - draw your own conclusions based on what you think. As for the categories and lists, I have spent too much time sourcing them under WP:V and WP:NOR to nominate them myself. Like I said elsewhere though, I will vote Delete once I have made sure every single such category and list is included in the nomination. Mad Jack 17:00, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, of course, I see this from the American point of view, and indeed the majority of the bio articles I edit are indeed of Americans. But like I said, I did not want to get bogged down in a discussion regardless, which is why I sort of stepped out of it and went with the "where is this going" thing with my first post to your pages, and what I said there hasn't really changed. I fully believe this is just a waste of everyone's time. When ethnicity and/or religion is unsourced it can and should absolutely be removed from the article, no argument there. But a source makes all the difference. A reliable one. Mad Jack 17:31, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes that's actually exactly what Wikipedia is supposed to be doing. Report (or "soak up", if you will) other people's classifications. Not make our own or avoid them completely. As for a list of Jewish slave traders, I doubt it would be large enough to make up its own page. However, the whole "Jews were slave traders" thing should definitely be addressed and dispelled under the articles about slave traders and possibly about Jewish American history. Mad Jack 17:44, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Again, if that article is notable enough it should be addressed in the appropriate Wikipedia articles, as well as, if we have it (and we should) an article on Black and Jewish relations in the United States. We can't just avoid touchy subjects because they are touchy. Mad Jack 18:04, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Eh, in order to make a List of something on Wikipedia, you need the list subjects to have articles. I don't believe we currently have a large number of articles on slave traders who were Jewish. I can't name a single one. I'm sure, though, if we had an article on one of them (i.e. if they were notable enough) the article would mention that the trader was Jewish and he would be in that category. That person certainly can be listed under one of the lists of Jews, but again, I seriously doubt we would ever have an actual article on more than a handful of Jewish slave traders. We certainly have a list of Jewish American gangsters, and a category, and articles like Bugsy Siegel certainly mention their Jewishness just like the Unabomber article mentions his Polishness. Even for people like David Berkowitz, it's mentioned. So I wouldn't say Wikipedia is too one-sided or anything like that to accentiate the "positive". Mad Jack 18:24, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Well it's not before 1970 anymore, is it? Anyway, we're getting into a social discussion of some sort when in fact I hadn't wanted to get into a discussion at all. The bottom line is now basically the same as it was when I began this conversation on your page - aside from the fact that neither of us will change our mind - the status quo as it is right now on Wikipedia is highly unlikely to change and it is just a waste of hard-earned time to try, especially, as you must have noticed, that so many people disagree with you even if of course a few agree. What it comes down to is there is no reason to remove cited information as long as it is properly cited, but, I've already said that. Mad Jack 18:30, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
That's a compliment to Wikipedia. We're supposed to be following the reliable source. If they make some sort of error, we must make it too (remember, it's about verifiability, not truth). And if a particular person disagrees with (what they admit) is the majority trend in the media, like I said, it says more about the person than the media Mad Jack 18:41, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
This comment is disturbing [2], coming from a person who has done nothing but harrass people on CfD's and edit talk pages. Bakaman Bakatalk 00:14, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re #CfD

Hi Bellbird,

some categories by religion (which include living people in many instances!) are about to come up.

Thanks for your alert, but I tend to steer clear of such categories as (1) I'm not sure on my position regarding them; and (2) they tend to be POV hotbeds. Hope all works out, David Kernow 02:40, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Follow-up to your comments to User:SlimVirgin

Hi Bellbird: See my responses to your observations and comments at User talk:SlimVirgin#Tagging and User talk:SlimVirgin#Perhaps. Thank you. IZAK 09:32, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I've responded again. This is fun :-) --Meshulam 04:05, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] See talk at Who is a Jew? article

Hi again Bellbird: See and add to the present discussions at Talk:Who is a Jew?#Who is a Jew for purposes of Wikipedia articles. Thanks. IZAK 09:41, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User page vs. Talk page

Hi Bellbird: I just wanted to point out to you that you left your most recent comments to me on my "User page" (the main page at User:IZAK) when you should have gone to my "discussion" page at User talk:IZAK. It is considered to be a big no-no for others to edit the user page of any editor...it's like adding talk and discussion to an article when it should be placed on an article's talk page. Please be more careful about this in the future (we all make this error sometimes...) Sincerely, IZAK 14:59, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your contact info

Hi Bellbird: Haven't heard from you in some time. You have not enabled your Wikipedia Email feature in your "tool box" on the left hand side of your user page. Sometimes editors overlook that when it's a useful way of staying in touch with other editors. Best wishes. IZAK 13:07, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

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