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Contents 1 Members and applications 1.1 Neuralolive (talk • contribs) 1.2 Krankman (talk • contribs) 1.3 Lexicon (talk • contribs) 2 Proposed recipients for barnstars 3 Miscellany 3.1 Chores 3.2 Conflict over a Foto in Sri_Lankan_Civil_War

This is the talk page of WikiProject Sri Lanka Reconciliation, a bipartisan effort to improve collaboration on and coverage of the Sri Lankan Civil War. Everybody is invited to participate in discussions here or to add a new topic. Members can moderate the discussion and delete any off-topic conversation; in particular personal attacks will be deleted. If you have a complaint about a user, please try to resolve it on their talk page first. For any complaints, please always be specific and provide links. To become a member, please apply in the Members and applications section below. What's new in WikiProject Sri Lanka Reconciliation? edit The "What's new" section is not being maintained anymore. See Chores for details. Watchlist: all; project; longterm /archive - /archive 2

[edit] Members and applications

Please add a new section with your user name in the headline like this: ==={{User|Your Alias}}===. See /archive#Members for old applications.

[edit] Neuralolive (talk • contribs)

(Original headline: "Thanks and membership")

Hi, and a big thank you to RaveenS for the warm welcome. As someone interested in the situation in Sri Lanka, but with no political/cultural/religious ties to the country or indeed anyone in it, I would very much like to join your group. As you can see I am also new to WP, and my editing skills aren't what they could have been, but I do feel that I can make a good effort substantively, and would like to contribute to the clearly well considered goals of this group. Thus, with a caveat that I will probably need quite a bit of support, I would like to apply for membership Neuralolive 06:14, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

• Support. — Sebastian 08:58, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support Based on the opinions of SebastianHelm and RaveenS--Sharz 10:24, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

No objections within 48 hours, which means we have a new member! Welcome, Neuralolive! — Sebastian 17:55, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Krankman (talk • contribs)

Hello. The invitation to this project came just at the right time. Only yesterday I thought about how to find people who might help with the Sri Lanka article, because I find the work really depressing. Not engaging in edit wars takes a lot of self-restraint. So does not quitting editing Wikipedia. Although I'm not too optimistic, I hope a group like this might help reduce the frustration. I'd like to cooperate with you. Cheers, Krankman 08:03, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

• Support haven't had any 1 - 1 experience with your editing however had a quick glance over your contributions. --Sharz 08:41, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support. The reason why I invited him was that I liked this example of good communication. — Sebastian 20:57, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support: German who can understand English, Sinhalese and Tamil? Ummm... look like the service pack of Sebastian --♪♫ ĽąĦĩŘǔ ♫♪ ^{walkie-talkie} 09:30, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

  ROFLOL! — Sebastian 21:05, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

No objections within 48 hours, which means the new member is accepted - welcome! — Sebastian 17:11, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lexicon (talk • contribs)

I've been invited to participate in this group several times by e-mail (probably to my old username, Osgoodelawyer). I have had some conflicts in the past with editors on Sri Lanka-related pages, and have tried to use logic and appeal to the rules, not emotion, to put my views forward. Since I just found myself having to clean up some POV hidden as POV-removal, I feel I'm ready to join. Lexicon (talk) 14:32, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

• Support — Sebastian 19:27, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed recipients for barnstars

For old discussions and votes, see WT:SLR/archive#Proposed recipients for barnstars

[edit] Miscellany

[edit] Chores

So far, I have been the only one who did such chores as

• archiving,
• closing votes,
• listing new members
• welcoming new members,
• updating What's New
• updating our watchlists.

(For completeness: Other chore that others did, too:

• welcoming new editors
• adding our banner to articles in our scope.)

In the future, I would like these chores to be

• either shared by everyone, if people think they're worth it
• or abolished.

I see worth in them, but if the majority doesn't then we'll abolish them.

I will create a page Wikipedia:WikiProject Sri Lanka Reconciliation/Chores and start listing what I did there. We can continue the discussion either here or on that page's talk page. — Sebastian 04:16, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Let's divide an conquerRaveenS 12:27, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I was thinking we could do it the Wiki way without a fixed work assignment. But divide and conquer might work better, at least for now. So here's a table that can be used for both purposes. Numbers correspond to current section numbers on WP:SLR/Chores. First, People could say on a scale from 0-10 how important they think a task is. And then we can use it as a signup sheet. — Sebastian 21:53, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Chore	Value for								Signup
	Seb.	Lahiru	Raveen	Kerr	Sharz	Neuralolive	Krankman	Total
1.1 Manual archiving	2	closed	2	vote closed			2	6
Agree with using bot (See request)	Yes	closed	Yes	vote closed			Yes	Yes (no objection)
1.2 Updating What's New	4		2			(x)	2	8
1.3 Adding our banner	3		7			(x)	6	16
1.4 updating our watchlist	6		8			(x)	8	22
1.5 Welcoming new users	5		5			(x)	6	16
2.1 When a member applied	7		7			(x)	7	21
2.2 listing and welcoming new members	10		10			(x)	10	30
3.1 closing votes	8		7			(x)	6	21
3.2 adding voting results to WP:SLR	8		8			(x)	8	24

I added explanations in the chores subpage for each of the chores that explain why they're needed, and what it means if we don't do them. I also added links to each section from the corresponding row in the table. Now, fellow members, please vote in the table! — Sebastian 01:13, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Just to make it clear: If you guys don't see value in them, they will not be done. — Sebastian 01:33, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, more than 48 hours passed. In fact, it's almost 100 hours since I posted this list, and only 2 people beside me voted at all. To me, it's an indication that most members take the project less seriously than I do. I will consequently reduce my commitment. I want to come to closure regarding the archiving since I said I'd get back to MiszaBot today. The other issues can remain open; they just don't get done unless they get sufficient support. It's up to each member to decide what's sufficient. I personally am not signing up for any task since no task even reaches 50% of all possible points. — Sebastian 01:00, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Sebastian - please don't take 48 or even 100 ours of inaction as lack of interest - it is sometimes difficult to access the web when the governement has cut all means of communication. Meanwhile, in Batticaloa, it has been a tough work week. (Oh, and I don't understand how to vote in these tables - don't say I didn't warn everyone) NeuralOlive 17:16, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your reassurance! I feel embarrassed - this, of all places, should be a place where people understand the pressure under which people in Batticaloa are. I didn't know you lived right there - my apologies!

Dealing with tables in Wikipedia is indeed a bit tricky, since it's not WYSIWIG. (Usually you have to use the preview a lot.) The way it works is you have to write the value you place on each chore into the field under your name. To make it easier, I just wrote "(x)" in each of the cells. Please replace the "(x)" with your value (from 0 to 10). Does this help? If you want to be really helpful, you could also update the total sum, but I don't want to ask that of you; I can do it later, too. — Sebastian 22:14, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Conflict over a Foto in Sri_Lankan_Civil_War

Hey there!

I tried to remove a picture from the article because in my opinion it

• is completely inadequate for an encyclopedia (that should be suitable for children as well) and
• has been put there purely for anti-Tamil propaganda.

There are hundreds of pictures like that, and both sides have committed similar acts of cruelty. I feel it's biased: Either we would have to put in a picture of a Sinhala atrocity as well--which I am against because fotos of this kind are just not necessary to illustrate anything in a serious article-- or we should get rid of it. I sincerely hope you agree with me.

I know that there has been a discussion on picture censorship (here) which turned out inconclusive. But since almost every single country has laws about these things and people generally feel it's the right thing to protect people from traumatizing stuff like that, shouldn't we try the same here at WP?

I suppose one should concentrate on the aspect of protection of minors rather than mentioning the political aspect, because that way the discussion should hopefully be less emotionally (politically) charged, right? Cheers, Krankman 15:31, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing this up, and for providing relevant links. I'm sorry, I don't think we can just ignore the political aspects; they're an essential part of the conflict. I feel the two questions are relevant:

1. What level of violence would be adequate for this article? Beside the Aranthalawa picture, there are already two other pictures violence, but they are not as graphic as the third. Is it OK to show pictures when the face of the victim is only 20 pixels wide, but not when it's 60 pixels? In that regard, I would like to see evidence that pictures of civilian victims of violence have a detrimental effect on young readers. There must have been some research for that - does anyone know more about this? I would like to add that this does not only concern minors, but anybody who looks at these pictures. Will it further increase violence in Sri Lanka when we show pictures like this? (Pictures of violence can stir up emotions in anyone - I have been told that even some Buddhist high ranking people called for violence.) Or will it show people the futility of war on civilians?
2. Given a certain level; what should be the balance of pictures that represents both sides fairly? Currently there are two pictures of LTTE violence versus one of GoSL violence. Is that fair?

From my experience with discussions here, I agree with your concern that the political aspect is likely to make it very hard to discuss the aspect of protection of minors. Therefore, it may make sense to discuss #2 before #1. — Sebastian 17:47, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

PS: I asked a specific question about the picture on Image talk:Aranthalawa Massacare 1.jpg. — Sebastian 19:18, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm also concerned that on the article, all the pictures seem to be captioned with a small somewhat POV sub-story. Captions should only frame the picture, if a link cannot be drawn from the text to the picture naturally, then it does not belong there. --Sharz 06:32, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

As we are trying to create an encyclopedic article and if pictures become point of distraction and discussion then it is an indicator of the total malaise in the article itself. But sometimes a picture can tell a more than the article itself. An encyclopedic article about historic concentration camp without the picture of emancipated prisoners will be unthinkable today. So my view is that we need to approach it case by case with a minimalist approach to pictures and captions. RaveenS 12:32, 27 March 2007 (UTC)