Rev. King, Truth is in the eye of the beholder. Even facts are debatable most of the time. 99% of what people say is based on their perspective, their point of view, and facts can be twisted without sacrificing truth by the clever use of frames. I don't want to deny anyone their POV. I'm not trying to reach "secular objectivity", because I understand it to be a false concept and I reject it outright.
So, here's a scenario. Someone posts something on a page like a category that is controversial. It gets removed by someone who objects to it. It gets restored, removed, restored, etc. until people get so frustrated that they resort to vandalism just as a means of lashing out. How should we handle this? I'll tell you how we handled it. I asked the staff for advice, and was reminded of the Three revert rule on Wikipedia. So we applied it, and had a discussion and a vote. I argued during the debate for the vote that we should [[Allow Points of View]] and leave the category on the page. I also suggested that a balancing category be placed on the page, or at least [[Category:Controversial]]. The answer I got back from the person who removed the category was basically this: under no circumstances would he allow that category to be placed on that page, even if it meant he would be banned from the site. One of his counter-proposals was actually to add dozens of caustic categories to yet another page, saying that we should Allow Points of View and that such additions could not be removed. Is that person worth working with to keep them engaged? We all say yes, but we also want behavioral compromises from him as well. So let me use a metaphor here. In the United States, yelling "FIRE!" in a theatre is not protected free speech, and can be punished by a court of law especially if someone is hurt in the stampede to get out of the theatre. But whether or not the law is engaged, yelling anything in a theatre is a bad idea, and the owners of the theatre have the right to remove the person who is yelling from their place of business, by physical means if necessary. Whether that person was yelling in support of the Iraq War or in opposition to it makes no difference. What view is being expressed means nothing to the fact that he/she is annoying the heck out of everyone and nobody wants to deal with the shouting. To continue with the metaphor, who decides what movies will be made? The people with an interest in making the movie and the people who finance the filiming. Who decides what movies will be shown on the screens? Who decides whether movies from Christian, Islamic or Jewish movies will be shown? The owners of the movie theatre, depending on how many screens they have and how many people they think might be interested in paying to watch the movies. This is where the wiki breaks from this metaphor. We don't live on movie screens. Movies, commercial radio, commercial television, newspapers and all the other types of broadcast media that we are dealing with in this country and around the world limit us to seeing what the people who have money want to allow us to see. Campaigns.Wikia was established to be an alternative to that. The Internet is an open system, where people are able to post their views without any cost to themselves. And the Internet is open where it costs very little if anything to view the pages. We are perfectly positioned with the MediaWiki technology and the success of Wikipedia to make Campaigns Wikia a primary pivot point for the expansion of the information age and the transformation of politics in our world. We want to have a thoughtful, meaningful dialoge among political equals about the subjects that affect us all. We are all equals, and the place that we have set up to have that debate is the Wiki. Again, objectivity is not the goal, because it doesn't exist in reality, only in academia. We're looking for well reasoned debate where we can see what all the candidates really think about the issues and be able to intelligently choose which one reflects our values and will be most likely and capable of putting our ideas into law. Or if nobody is worthy of our support, we need a way to get out our own views and perhaps run for office ourselves. The "Social Contract" that you're asking for was approved last month by those people active and voting in the policy debates. Allow Points of View (APOV) is a version of of Neutral Point of View (NPOV) that says that points of view are welcome and shouldn't be deleted if we disagree with them, but instead should be countered with alternative viewpoints. Specific policies about the format of pages would in my mind discourage people from engaging in discussion. Pages on the wiki will be built by those members of the community that decide to get involved. We can certainly tag well-designed pages as potential models, and we can create a category or other means for people to help build the pages that need to be expanded and cleaned up, I don't think we should limit contributions to a specific and limited article design. And thank you for speaking about the need for a non-caustic form of debate. I agree that is a key point that we need to keep in mind when posting in a public forum. We should avoid doing so, and we should also be willing to forgive people who get out of control. Bring such discussions off the list, onto the talk pages or into other forums so we can work out our differences and come back to the table ready to help build participatory politics in order to rebuild our world into one that works for all of us. Chad Lupkes Seattle On 10/24/06, CH Rob J King <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Secular French post-modern philosopher Michel Foucault, not a religious believer and even a practicing homosexual, nonetheless questioned rigorously the supposed "objectivity" upon which modern Western Liberal societies are now built. In my brief foray into the Wikia campaigns, I was saddened at the attempts by many to impose an apparent "objectivity" (by force if necessary) over an over-lapping set of complex political viewpoints arising from an equally complex set of underlying and over-arching worldviews. What constitutes "normativity"? As Foucault questioned regarding sexuality, is heterosexuality normative, and if so why? Is homosexuality normative, especially if the ancient Greek philosophers seemed to welcome it? Whose reigning sets of institutions, social and more importantly academic, will define what is normative? What happens with groups, like Muslems and Jews living in France in 2006, who, for the sake of a secular normativity, are denied of religious liberties such as not being allowed to wear religious headware in public? Is the secular view normative? Is the Jewish view? Is the Islamic view? Who decides? Here is the problem that Wikia Campaigns will now confront. Any public forum wishing to remain credible will not seek to silence or eliminate voices that the forum's moderators happen to be in disagreement with. Granted, Wikia Campaigns will seek to be objective, but in seeking objectivity, as Foucault would rightly question, whose sets of knowledges, whose protocol, and by whose authority would one define such objectivity? Simply claiming academic or professional standing, although a move with obvious merit (i.e. it is more difficult to obtain entrance into schools such as Harvard, Duke, etc.), nonetheless does not solve the issue. Pro-abortionists have ethicists teaching at Princeton. Pro-lifers have ethicists also teaching at Princeton. Which Ivy League ethicist are we supposed to view as authoritative? Because of the incommensurability (to use moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre's terminology) of current Western European, N. American and the elite world moral debates (e.g. pro-life vs. pro-abortion), in order that no perspective be silenced, a quick and easy antidote is for Wikia Campaigns to adopt a type of "Social Contract" (e.g. as described by Rousseau) so that every participant in Wikia Campaigns will agree to a mutually binding, mutually determined set of normative rules, policies and procedures. One example could be rules and standards that would govern the giving of academic lectures--i.e. a formal statement followed by short, pre-determined lengths of responses, without editting for content or even tone (e.g. many academic debates can become quite heated, even in the elite academic institutions of the United States such as Duke or Notre Dame). The pre-determined length will allow short, well-written, non-caustic responses, in short, similar to a televised political debate. Only through adopting a mutually-binding, mutually-determined social contractarian form of on-line communication can the attempts at "knowledge control," as described by Foucault and others, be avoided. Sincerely, Rob J. King, M.Div., Th.M., Ph.D. (ABD*), Professor of Bible and Christian Ministry, Grand Canyon University-Online
_______________________________________________ Campaigns-l mailing list [email protected] http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/campaigns-l
