Talk:Land value tax/Archive 2

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Trimming the bottom of the article

It seems to me like we've got a huuuuuge list of references at the bottom, but also a lot of places with [citation needed]. Here's what I'm planning:

  • Waiting one week for other concerned editors to act.
  • If you know how any particular general reference relates to the article, please change it to an inline citation.
  • If there is a general reference that does not support anything in the article, remove it.
  • If we need a general reference but it for some reason does not support any particular part of the article, please explain why here.
  • After the week has passed, I will mercilessly go at the references section with a pair of hedge clippers. I will also delete all statements with [citation needed].
  • Once we're done with this, I think we should shorten the external links section too. To see what I have in mind for when we're finished, see the bottom of the flat tax article. --Explodicle (talk) 17:49, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
I think that there should be as many citations as possible to research. This is encyclopedic, let people check out sources at their leisure. Why limit information. As to external links, why should the flat tax article be the model, because it is a crack pot idea with just one main source as opposed to a crack pot :) idea with multiple sources? 70.22.67.251 (talk) 22:02, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Ok, using today's featured article as an example, I think this article would be most helpful if we relied chiefly on inline citations, but also a few good general references and further reading. For example, all the general references in the Rachel Carson relate to citations, but they're in general references because the citations call out different page numbers. There are a small handful of books specifically about her that are kept for further reading. --Explodicle (talk) 14:29, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
But there is a difference between a biographical entry and an idea entry. This is an economic concept entry which should as much as possible reflect the historical as well as academic research. And as economics is the dismissal science, there is ambiguity and dispute, so more general citations should be required. There is also the difference between the "theoretical" and "empirical". As taxation is also a political question, there are going to be questions relating to implementation and about how special interest motivators interact with the concept. As this particular concept also involves ethical concerns there are going to be philosophical and theological concepts.
There probably should be a preference for the more modern citations to work in peer reviewed journals and to work that is published as opposed to stuff that is just on some web site. With respect to non-journal literature, I'd say that there is a place for research and "claims" (so long as they are listed as "claims") by advocacy organizations. But here the preference should be for more established and long lasting groups, such as in the US: the Schalkenbach Foundation, Lincoln Land Institute, Henry George Foundation of America, Center for the Study of Economics. As to the other advocates and groups, they are pretty much pretend organizations - one person outfits with no real operating budgets nor historical contexts, nor work with actual elected officials or use of actual assessment or other verifiable data.
Perhaps rather than limiting or removing citations we should first categorize them.
General
Books
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
Historical
Books
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
Other
Economic
Books
Theoretical
Empirical
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
Theoretical
Empirical
Other
Moral Philosophical and Theological
Books
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
Other
70.22.67.251 (talk) 15:16, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I like that idea. I'm thinking we could split it up into "References" and "Further reading", where the references section is short and relates to citations as I mentioned above, and the further reading section is categorized as you just specified. Instead of deleting anything I can temporarily move it to Talk:Land value tax/Extra references until someone adds it to one of these categories. --Explodicle (talk) 16:37, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
Less talk. more action. 70.22.67.251 (talk) 22:29, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I said I'd give everyone a week, remember? I'll get started today if I get the chance. --Explodicle (talk) 14:52, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok, the references section is shortened. Remember, if anyone misses those sources, you can create a "Further reading" section under the references and put them in there, preferably categorized per 70.22.67.251's suggestion above if you want to keep a lot of them. If possible, please try to stick to books and websites that focus primarily (or at least extensively) on LVT.

Now on to the external links... I think we should keep the top 10 by Alexa ranking or Google hits. Any other ideas? --Explodicle (talk) 19:19, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I just removed a few based on completely unrelated criteria. We should probably lose a few more or organize them better, if anyone has any ideas go for it. --Explodicle (talk) 20:36, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Kiaochow (Jiaozhou Bay)

It's surprising that we have no mention of the German colony of Kiaochow in the current article, since it was the only case so far where the LVT was implemented as the Single Tax (at the rate of 6%) in the manner that Henry George advocated. Even our article on Jiaozhou Bay doesn't make the connection although it was a fundamental fact of the colony's economic organisation and fairly influential on 20th century Chinese economics, particularly Nationalist economics. We really should have something about it. -- Derek Ross | Talk 16:04, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Then put it in. Less talk, more action. 70.22.67.251 (talk) 22:16, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
Ouch! Touche, <grin>! -- Derek Ross | Talk 23:14, 22 February 2008 (UTC)