Wikipedia talk:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2007-05-28 Purgatory/Archive001

message: Please answer the following questions to help us build a foundation for resolving the dispute. Please try to keep your answers brief and avoid disparaging comments about the other participants. Vassyana 17:15, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Questions from mediator

message: *What were the main concerns laid out in the RfC, in your view?
** LostCaesar gave the page a POV overhaul in February. He resisted efforts to fix the page. He repeatedly removed the POV tag himself without first addressing my concerns. When I insisted that the page was POV, he got an RfC to vindicate himself. The RfC confirmed that the page was POV. Alecmconroy outlined how to fix the page. Jonathan Tweet 01:19, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Additional questions

message: #Reverts, barring vandalism, should be fully explained on the article talk page.
#Editors should avoid multiple reverts.
#Propose any major changes on the article talk page.
#What is held as a teaching of the Roman Catholic Church should be limited to the Catechism. In the case of historical teachings, the beliefs should be attributed to a time period and supported by multiple reliable secondary sources. added 10:30, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed (items 1-3).  Lima 04:46, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

text: Agreed, in general (items 4-7).  Obviously, historical teachings should be attributed to the authors; to the Church only if the document is a document of the Church, such as the Roman Catechism or a declaration by an Ecumenical Council.  For a quotation from a writing, a source that gives the quotation with its context should, no less obviously, be enough, without requiring multiple, or indeed any, secondary sources to prove that the writer did say what is attributed to him.  Applying the rule about removing unsourced information after a reasonable period of several days (not several weeks or months) would benefit the article greatly.  Lima 12:07, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

text: #Given Lima's history of deletions, I'd also like deletions of substantial material to be cut and pasted to the talk page. That way other editors can see what's being excluded from the page. I'd also like to ask that the protocol be to ask for cites if a statement is challenged rather than simply deleting it. Jonathan Tweet 14:02, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

text: #Please make clear to us what mulitple reverts means. If I write that something, Lima reverts it, and I revert it back, is that a multiple revert? Jonathan Tweet 14:02, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

text: #A review of the Talk page shows that the defenders of the RCC POV (LC before him and now Lima) love to stall things on the talk page. There isn't much of a community working on Purgatory, so when Limas simply opposes changes that look reasonable to me, there's just the two of us to work it out. The reason that the page is a mess is that we can't come to an agreement on content, whether while editing the page proper or on the talk page. If I propose a change on the talk page and Lima says No, where do we go from there? Jonathan Tweet 14:02, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

text: #The tricky detail of how to present concepts that priests have widely taught to the laity with the approval of the church from church teaching is going to be, well, tricky. If a Pope says, on the basis of over a thousand years of tradition, that unbaptized infants go to limbo, if that's not church teaching, it's also more than one guy's opinion. Jonathan Tweet 14:02, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

text: #Is this restriction "early church" only? Can one say, "Aquinas said that the souls of the damned go immediately to hell" and cite Aquinas? Can one say, "Hippolytus and Tertullian wrote that the souls of all the dead are kept in hades until Judgment Day" and then cite them? My understanding of OR is that one is not to interpret primary sources but that one can include "verifiable content from reliable sources without further analysis."Jonathan Tweet 14:02, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

text: #Does this mean that any statement that Lima doesn't like needs to have two cites? Jonathan Tweet 14:02, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

text: #Can we also say that editors should ask for cites rather than deleting the material out of hand? Jonathan Tweet 14:02, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

text: I still wait for the main issue to be addressed, which is, how do we get the page in shape, in accordance with the RfC? If the answer is that we follow these suggestions, I predict that the page will not get into shape. Lima still has plenty of opportunity to fight me at every step. Maybe the answer is "Try it and see," and I'm willing to go along with a process as long as I'm seeing progress. But my hopes will not be high. Jonathan Tweet 14:02, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

text: Responding to #6, yes. In-line citation is not required for all disputed claims. However, it should be clearly covered in multiple reliable sources. Catholicism and purgatory have an incredible number of sources available for use. It is a very widely covered topic. There is no reason, unless a claim is dubious or particularly obscure, that multiple sources cannot reinforce reasonable claims for this topic. Vassyana 20:13, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggestions