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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Universaliss (talk | contribs) at 04:12, 29 July 2005 (→Qiyamah). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Problems with the wiki model?

Due to its nature, the wiki model fails in preserving accurate information content. This is more pronounced in more contentious issues in the sphere of the humanities. Conflicts of opinion or attribution may arise in scientific topics, but they much more easily resolvable and less emotionally vested than say articles relating to religion.

For all its promise and potential, the wiki model effectively removes the concept of authorship, ownership of an article (not in the intellectual property sense though) and the quality of the information in it.

At best, the resulting articles reflect the opinions or inclinations of the users, rather than any disinterested discourse. If the majority of, or the most active the users are politically pro- position A on a given issue or history, for instance. An article deriving from position B on the same issue will not maintain its integrity for long. As a result, disputes arise, and eventually a sysop or admin will intervene to freeze an article - usually in the form that favors the position of the majority, position A.

This neither makes the article's content more accurate, nor more democratic - simply because the active user base need not reflect the population at large, who are mostly not even aware of wikipedia.

A case in point:

the Qiyamah (the muslim account of the judgement day) article. A user insisted on a certain order of events, even though neither does he speak arabic to read the Qur'an, nor does the qur'an itself give a clearly discernible succession of events, especially when it comes to minor details. He insisted for instance that the moon gets eclipsed, in contradiction of the authoritative classical commentaries on the quran. To him the classical arabic muslim commentators of the quran were irrelevant, and he insisted on restoring the passage every time I deleted it. Nor was it clear to him that such minutiae are completely irrelevant when treating a subject such a judgement day, in which the fashion in which the moon is destroyed or whatever is hardly relevant to the main thrust of the article. I could not impress on him these points, and as it stands, he keeps restoring that faulty and irrelevant piece of information into the article. Some that contravenes my original intent and attitude towards the article. I do not know how to resolve this. And I am convinced that this must be the case in all articles relating to religion (particularly the islamic religion). To point out to him that the most authoritative sources we have on the meaning of the verses are the muslim commentators themselves, which have been accepted as authoritative by a consensus of muslim scholars for centuries, earns me the label "fundamentalist."

Likewise, in trying to derive the information on the day of the judgement only from the Quran and the hadith, in order to avoid spurious accounts and interpretation prone details, and to make the article a survey of what islam's primary texts say about that day, again earned me the labels "fundamentalist" and "salafi" whatever that means from a user called Zora.

I believe this is a serious shortcoming of the wiki medium.

Another case study (political articles):

Take for instance articles on the middle east. Much as the narrative that predominates western press is largely non representative of the narratives local to the middle east, wiki articles reflect the same biases and therefore perpetuate a political will, rather than a scholarly treatment of the subject.

Qiyamah

Your persistent personal attacks on the talk page, and content deletions on the Qiyamah wiki are unacceptable. I added a link to another page (on the Qiyamah talk page) which explicitly states that a lunar eclipse will precede Judgement Day. As to your accusations that I do not speak Arabic and refrain from reading the Quran you'll notice I've been directly citing the Quran in my last five edits. If you view the List of Islamic terms in Arabic page you'll see that I've added numerous terms including their Arabic equivalent. I would appreciate if under your monologue above you would distinguish between actions associated with me and actions associated with Zora. As I have stated on the Qiyamah talk page you are welcome to add a direct quotation of the quran "...darkness engulfed the moon..." but I wish to include all viewpoints. These personal attacks will result in being banned. freestylefrappe 19:02, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

What bothers me the most is your refusal to consider my point. I never said you don't use the quran. I said you're not an arabic speaker. If you were you'd realize that the tafaseer do not see this as an eclipse, nor does Yusuf Ali's translation match the arabic text. there is neither "engulfed" or "buried" or even "darkness" in the verse in question. There is only the verb khasafa, which means darkened. That's where the word for eclipse comes from "khosoof". The classical interpreters' work is good enough for me. None have suggested it's an eclipse, as i've pointed out in our discussion. As to the charge of personal attacks - I reject it. I said you're neither an arabic speaker nor a muslim. I may be wrong about the latter, but it's obvious you're relying on yusuf ali's translation rather than the original text. I've also said you're vandalizing the page I started, and violating its intent and philosophy. The reason I say this is that you insist on adding your view to the main body of the article before we've settled it first in the discussion page. Now that's vandalism. And I'm more than happy to let the admins settle this between us.

--Universaliss 23:21, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

On the Qiyamah talk page you posted the following (all of which go under the category of personal attacks):

• "This is an article I started. It is an article about muslims and for muslims. You are neither a muslim , nor do you speak arabic nor are you within any right to argue or change the contents of this article. Let me see you try , pest. Or is wikimedia a subsidiary of the ADL now?"

• "Sounds to me like you Zora are one of those zionist-motivated police state enforcers of the ilk of Steve Emerson and David Horowitz. Perhaps you would like my home address to "make sense of who I am as a person." Newsflash. It's none of your business. As to who's muslim and who's not, another newsflash. Yes there are very clear lines that delineate who is muslim and who is not, or who is catholic and who is not , or anglican or episcopal as defined explicitly in those religions' texts and catechisms. This dilution of religion you seek to enforce on everyone is actually out of ahostility to religionists and religion. As to "wikipedia's" aims, I do not believe you can understand or appreciate the meaning and goals of a wiki environment. It does not mean a complete negation of authorship and ownership of a given article. Anyway, this discussion is moot since you yourself have you are hardly proficient with muslim terminology to waste my time discussing this. Sayonara."

• "...please spare me your racially motivated bent..."

In addition you have deleted comments by me and Skoosh. If you thought you could hide this you are quite mistaken. freestylefrappe 02:03, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

I've raised the matter to the administrators. It's up to them to decide in this case. You have been flamebaiting and I have no time or desire for it.--Universaliss 04:12, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Freestylefrappe

First of all, I know nothing about the subject and cannot help you, I also am not an admin. While Freestylefrappe may not have acted as civily as possible, he is still within his rights and should not have been listed in WP:VIP. I feel that you are overreacting, but I am not siding with Freestylefrappe. My only advice is to contact an admin and try to merge your views with Freestylefrappe's. Cheers. Howabout1 03:02, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

Reply

No problem! You've been here for three of four days! A lot of us have been here for years (I have six months under my belt), and all of us make mistakes when we're new. You're just not familiar with the wiki-way. :) Howabout1 03:14, July 29, 2005 (UTC)