User talk:The Thadman/Userbox/PolCompass

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[edit] Test validity

The test at politicalcompass.org is invalid metric 01:48, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Metric, the Political Compass is merely a personality test. It's not meant to be a sterling example of accuracy. :-) It's a novelty, and a fun one to take, and is to some extent indicative of one's personal political beliefs. In short I've created the Userbox for this test for one reason and one reason alone: Fun. :-) If you're not having fun just messing around with it and seeing where our fellow Wikipedians end up on the scale, I respectfully implore you not to use it. אמר Steve Caruso _(desk/poll) 15:33, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

If it's a novelty, then why are so many people taking it seriously? I don't use it, and my effort is to show that the outcome of the test is propaganda. Such a thing, if not made explicitly clear as being skewed, should seriously be looked down upon, and not considered "fun". The test, by assuming everything can and should be solved using government, is a bias towards authoritarianism. If you want to continue to support propaganda, then please make sure and warn that the results bear such a bias. It would be irresponsible otherwise. Thanks. metric 10:08, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Propaganda? You have me thoroughly confused. If anyone is willing to take an online survey and give it any sort of weight, one might as well take Tickle.com's "Which Star Wars character are you?" test and then analyze the implications of what side of the Force they express the most. :-) The userbox also links directly to the Political Compass article here on Wikipedia. I would encourage you to carve out an entire section of that article and dedicate it to criticisms concerning its methodology. If you insist about a disclaimer, we need a place on Wikipedia to house it, and the Political Compass would be the best spot, but my dear Metric, overall I think you're taking these things far too seriously. אמר Steve Caruso _(desk/poll) 14:07, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

In the spirit of Wikipedia:No_disclaimer_templates, you don't need a disclaimer in the box. You can put one in noninclude though. --GunnarRene 14:40, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree, the criticisim should be based in the political compass article, and not here. After a while of being ignored, I'm trying to stir up a debate about the issue. This isn't something silly like Starwars characters. This is assigning people into categories, and possibly even matching them up with political candidates! I think it's votematch.com that does that. If this test comes out and tells you who you are alligned with, and it's biased, then it's propaganda. Sorry for abusing your talk page. I'll try keep my rants isolated to the political compass talk page. metric 23:40, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

No abuse of the talk page. That's what it's here for and rants are welcome. :-) I do appreciate all of your input! I guess that we both have very different outlooks on the function of web quizzes. How about in the mean time, while the criticisms section is being fleshed out, I'll edit the category template to talk a bit more about the Political Compass article and leave a link to it so that people are more apt to read? If it ends up as a well-balanced article, and readers take it to heart, then they should have a well-balanced view of such a test. אמר Steve Caruso _(desk/poll) 12:52, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Neutral range

Hi. Yes, it's fun. The neutral range, however, seems to be too narrow. I score at 0.13 on one axis, and when I tested with 0.01, even that put me out of the neutral zone. Only those who score 0.00 are regarded as neutral. Could you extend the neutral zone out to 0.50 or something in either direction? --GunnarRene 16:58, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I've now extended the range to +/- 0.5. Perhaps it should be extended to +/- 1? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by GunnarRene (talk • contribs) .

That looks pretty good. :-) 'Might even think about extending it all the way out to ±2.5 as the scale ranges on both axes from -10 to 10. ±1 would give a range of the innermost two points and ±2.5 would give the innermost five. אמר Steve Caruso _(desk/poll) 19:35, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Maybe. I've extended it to ±1 for the time being. --GunnarRene 12:14, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fix redlinks?

Good fun. Can this be fixed to eliminate the redlinks to the deleted categories? Thanks! Katr67 20:23, 9 March 2007 (UTC)