Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Objectivism

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Contents 1 Key articles for Wikipedia 1.0 2 A question to start off with... 3 Self-interest 4 Wikipedia Day Awards 5 POV 6 Randian charaters split

[edit] Key articles for Wikipedia 1.0

Hello! We at the Work via WikiProjects team for Wikipedia 1.0 would like you to identify the "key articles" from your project that should be included in offline releases of Wikipedia based on their importance, regardless of quality. We will use that information to assess which articles should be nominated for Version 1.0 (not yet open) and later versions. Hopefully it will also help you identify which articles are the most important for the project to work on. As well, please add to your Philosophy/Religion WikiProject article table any articles of high quality. If you are interested in developing a worklist such as this one for your WikiProject, or having a bot generate a worklist automatically for you, please contact us. Please feel free to post your suggestions right here. Thanks! Walkerma 05:53, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A question to start off with...

The thing that struck me the strongest about the project page were a couple of phrases:

  ...that disputes between Objectivists can be resolved amicably...

...and...

  ...will foster communication among Objectivist Wikipedians...

Maybe I don't yet grasp the whole Wiki concept yet, but shouldn't the discussion also include the opinions and work of non-objectivists, anti-objectivists and people-who-just-don't-care-one-way-or-the-about-objectivism-but-might-still-have-something-to-contribute...ists.

Perhaps I'm reading the whole thing wrong but this has the feel of someone trying to exclude all those who's opinions might differ from the party line.

Would someone like to clarify?

MDMullins

I wrote the "Scope" section which you've quoted here. Those statements refer to the context which led me to consider starting this project. There was no deliberate effort to exclude non-Objectivists or make them feel unwelcome (though my guess is most of those interested in this type of project would be Objectivsts or at least sympathetic to the philosophy). If the other participants feel that the current wording is unnecessarily exclusive, feel free to edit the paragraph. As an aside, I'd like to apologise to the other participants for my own lack of contributions so far. Shortly after launching the wikiproject I became much busier in my offline life than I had previously been. I will try to be more active from now on.--Matthew Humphreys 13:05, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

My contributions are focused on the Ayn Rand Wiki article in Portuguese. I am back with intellectual ammunition for you gringos --a link supporting my claim that Mencken and Sumner influenced Rand, not Freidrich (whom Mencken translated). The non-vandalizable link is: http://hankphillips.com/freedom.htm There are too many looter vandals crawling through the English Wikipedia article to make it worth my while to keep re-editing, but I would appreciate some help including Mencken and Sumner under influencers, and restoring the thumbnail statement of what she taught: She believed:

• That man must choose his values and actions by reason;
• That the individual has a right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing self to others nor others to self; and
• That no one has the right to seek values from others by physical force, or impose ideas on others by physical force.

Without that summing-up the article is too easily reconverted into a smear sheet. I would like to see a Rand Wicki article on a server the looters cannot get into, to serve as a touchstone for editing efforts. Until then, I will be posting stuff at my own website in hopes it may prove useful to some of my compeers. I will ignore the starting question in hopes that my actions count more than declarations of faith. translator 20:49, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Self-interest

I'd like to see the virtues of selfishness and/or rational self-interest sections/pages expanded. I've very keen on the concept/s but don't have enough background about it to feel confident to add more about it myself. The Wiki pages on Ayn Rand and objectivism seem to excessively critical of the philosophy of Rand's works, which think should be treated more bookishly. I suppose communistic philosophy is just as poorly treated, considering mainstream ideologies. 66.57.225.77 07:57, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 18:14, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] POV

As noted above, the phrasing of the project's scope is not in compliance with Wikipedia's Neutral point of view policy. Please rephrase it so as to be inclusive of proponents and critics of the philosophy.--Eloquence* 06:29, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. Crazynas ^t 23:50, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Randian charaters split

I think it time to finally re-split the articles on the main protagonists of Rand's novels. To have them is clearly justified, given the massive amount written about them in both Objectivist and non-Objectivist circles (and also given how many articles, say, Battle Royale has on its characters). However, to prevent a repeat of the cull that eradicated them before, and destroyed the coverage of both Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead, I think two requirements really have to be met:

1. The articles should have references, which are hitherto lacking from the article Characters in Atlas Shrugged.
2. A hard and fast list of the characters that deserve articles should be drawn up first.

There's nothing that can really be said for the first one; that just requires work. However, the second point is easily remediable. Currently, there are articles on Dagny Taggart and John Galt (which I split from the list of characters just now) from Atlas Shrugged, and Gail Wynand (for whatever reason, his article wasn't deleted before) from the Fountainhead. I suggest that the following characters have articles:

Atlas Shrugged - Dagny Taggart, John Galt, Hank Rearden, Francisco d'Anconia, James Taggart

The Fountainhead - Howard Roark, Peter Keating, Ellsworth Toohey, Dominique Francon, Gail Wynand

We the Living - Kira Argounova

Any suggestions? Do you disagree with this list? Does Ragnar Danneskjöld deserve an article or Gail Wynand not? Do you disagree with the split overall? Bastin 16:58, 24 March 2007 (UTC)