Talk:Seasteading

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I have added the {{advert}} template because this entire article, rather than being about the concept of seasteading, instead talks about the Seasteading Institute. Much of the content appears to have been taken from a press release by the institute. Examples of inappropriate advertisement type phrases include (all emphasis are added) "will focus on building a community, doing research and building the first Seastead in the San Francisco Bay." and "...find profitable ways of exploiting a Seastead." and "...adventurous nature of this project..." and finally "...entrepreneur and philanthropist Peter Thiel gave the project a headstart by pledging $500,000." The institutes website is given multiple times, and the whole page is pushing the values and ideals of the institute, such as the pro-anarchist statement "The latter example shows that existing governments do not like competitors, but it also shows that competition helps to force existing governments to innovate. This is one of the major goals of the Seasteading Institute." The page needs massive cleanup in order to achieve a neutral point of view and encyclopedic content. For these reasons I have tagged it with its most aggregiouse error, as an advertisement for an institute and its values. Please assist in bringing this article up to wikipedia standards. Thank You F-451 (talk) 00:45, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

  • It can't be an advertisement for the Seasteading Institute, as most text was already written before the institute existed. There have been numerous attempts at creating new land at sea. The reason Seasteading is the only viable project at this time is because it is funded and active. The factual information about who's behind the project, and who funded it should be in it, though you may want to describe it in less POV wording. It would be better if someone else does that as i'm not an native speaker (obviously :)). The most notable objections against Seasteading are in an article by China Mieville, you might want to add those as well to make the article more balanced. Joepnl (talk) 11:28, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I have retagged the article as NPOV. Dissenting opinions from your suggested link and others should be incorporated into the text and the passages I previously emphasised still need to be reworded to conform to a neutral viewpoint. Thank You. F-451 (talk) 01:38, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
  • I tried to cleanup the NPOV language, but it still needs for someone familiar with the issues to provide a more balanced (meaning neutral) viewpoint. F-451 (talk) 01:50, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Actually, i reread Mieville's article and it is not so much against Seasteading but against the until now failed Freedom Ship and libertarianism (while Seasteading is not a libertarian project per se) in general, which can be expected from a Trotskyist writer. May be his comments should be inserted in the Freedom Ship article. I haven't found much other critique anywhere, apart from "it's not very realistic" which is up to the reader to decide I think. The article looks perfectly neutral to me now. By the time people have had the time to think about it probably more fundamental criticism can be found and inserted. (Added an interesting link to a Reason Magazine article). Joepnl (talk) 11:38, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Agreed, the article is fine on neutrality, but now it needs to be expanded, if there are no objections, i'm going to retag it as
Please help improve this article or section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (April 2008)

until someone can add some more information on the topic. F-451 (talk) 23:31, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

    • There's definately a lot more information to talk about so your tag is fine with me. The FAQ on their site may be a good source [1], especially the "generic responses" ([2]) should be in the article somehow because they counter every criticisim I've seen so far (I've read each and every comment on seasteading, and they are all answered by "look at cruise ships, 10 million people go on vacation on a cruise ship each year without having the problems (health, security, safety) you say will not be available at Seastead"). I'm not exactly sure how the article should be expanded though. We could include more information about how living at sea needs innovation and sustainable ways to obtain energy, food etc. (because "importing" them would be very expensive) but those things are not really special to seasteading or even Ocean colonization. One thing that should be added though is that one of the goals of the project is to create a competitive market for governments (it's a lot easier to switch from seastead to seastead compared to emigration) which really is a new and imho splendid idea. Joepnl (talk) 02:03, 30 April 2008 (UTC)