Talk:Democracy/Archive 11

message: When editing this article, please do so in an objective and rational way with particular attention for preserving the value of the contributions from the Wiki community.  Please carefully consider any material removed so that "the baby isn't thrown out with the bath water," as the common saying goes.  Instead of removing all contributions by an author, please instead remove only those things which are not true and cannot be refined or cited.  Legitimate facts lacking citations should have citations added, and not simply be removed because it doesn't suit your political agendas or biases.  We need objective, rational editing which focuses on improving every aspect/detail instead of blanket destruction of valuable contributions.  Instead of citing names of specific abusers, I'll simply note that this most especially applies to some of the most active authors/editors of this Democracy article.  Please watch the more zealous and frequent "contributors" to this article carefully for reversions.  --Landen99 19:02, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Source added, expanded material.Ultramarine 19:54, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Your own opinions regarding the ideal democracy are of course original research unless published in a reliable source. Wikpedia is not the place for publishing them. Please place your criticisms  in the appropriate sections in the article and where there are also counter-arguments. In other words, follow NPOV. Also, your views are already covered in the article in other sections like "Plutocracy", no need to duplicate them. Finally, please do no state opinions as they were undisputed facts.Ultramarine 20:43, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have also reverted Landen's additions.  I don't feel any of the text would attain consensus; without taking sides in what appears to be the continuing "Ultramarine et. al" debates, it does indeed read as some combination of opinion essay and other problematic constructions. - David Oberst 21:33, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Many people do not share your personal opinions. They do not necessarily think that democracy involve elections and representatives, see sortition, deliberative democracy, or classical direct democracy. Your own opinions regarding the ideal democracy are of course original research unless published in a reliable source. Wikpedia is not the place for publishing them. Please place your criticisms in the appropriate sections in the article and where there are also counter-arguments. In other words, follow NPOV. Also, your views are already covered in the article in other sections like "Direct democracy", "Limited voter turnout", and "Plutocracy". No need to duplicate them. If anything is missing there, create a new section in the "Advantages and disadvantages" part, do not state your particular views unopposed in the beginning. Finally, please do no state opinions as they were undisputed facts.Ultramarine 15:09, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

text: You have answered none of my objections above.Ultramarine 01:59, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You have offered no legitimate, specific objections.  I have answered you vague critics with very concrete and irrefutable answers.  You have not addressed (or even read?) any of them (my answers). Let's have some rational thought here from the Wiki-Democracy article trolls .. try again. --Landen99 21:08, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Certainly does not agree with them and are not self-evident.Ultramarine 12:28, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Even regarding #1. The word does not come from Latin. Another example #3 "Most democracies employ representatives who only turn to the interests of the people during elections, and most times simply advance their own agendas regardless of the views of their constituents on the matter." This is your own POV, my POV is that they take considerable care to public opinion in order to get elected again and in order to not damage their party.Ultramarine 10:31, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Unfortunately there is no "from Late Latin democratia" in the text. Regarding #3, that is your pov, my is different.Ultramarine 17:05, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

text: The opinion described in #4 (previously #3), "most times simply advance their own agendas regardless of the views of their constituents on the matter", is your own. My is very different as noted above.Ultramarine 19:19, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Did you just say that your POV is that representatives advance the views of their constituents and not their own agendas?  That certainly defies human nature, and there is certainly no constitutional mandate for them to do so.  Such a thing would only occur with honest politicians, but back to reality, politicians are well-known for their dishonesty and corruption.  The only POV that I noted above, was a reference to politicians taking great care concerning public opinion/image, but I don't see how that relates to advancing the views of their constituents.  Making yourself look good to a group, is entirely different from actually representing that group. --Landen99 16:58, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You have presented your own unsourced pov, my is different as noted above. Read it again, you did not represent it correctly.Ultramarine 17:56, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You stated, "my POV is that they take considerable care to public opinion in order to get elected again and in order to not damage their party."  I re-iterate that public opinion of the image of their Reps is different from the public will, except perhaps by constructing the image that they are proponents of it.  Image and action are as different as war movies and battlefields. --Landen99 15:34, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Editing abuses and article reversions

message: It appears that there really are three types of distinct ideas from democracy:  The modern democracies (significant current examples and the methods, policies, and role in the modern world and contemporary thought about them), the past democracies (history of), and the theories and philosophies of democracy.  Anyone seeking to learn more about modern democracy would certainly have little interest in sortition or plutocracy, to name a few.  Those interested in the concept of democracy in a more academic or idealistic sense would not likely be interested in the applications present or past. Frankly, all variations of democracy should be linked to the respective section of democracy by category, in order to remove the clutter and prevent information overload.  This would also allow the various trolls to protect the aspect of democracy which they prefer without harming the other aspects or damning the invaluable contributions of the Wikicommunity.  It would also make it easier for authors to identify the appropriate place for their contributions and to enhance organization of this very cluttered article. --Landen99 21:17, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There are numerous types of democracy, as shown in the article with sources.Ultramarine 02:00, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

text: I do not agree. If there is too much material in a section, it can be moved to a subarticle. Disambiguation is for clearly separate topics that happen to share a similar name.Ultramarine 12:16, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I see clear separations, perhaps due to the incredible diversity of the subject.  Perhaps disambiguation may not be required, but I definitely think that Liberal Democracy and Representative Democracy should both be moved entirely (including all discussions regarding them throughout the article) to separate subarticles, just as Direct Democracy has been moved.  I also think that the varieties section should be structured. --Landen99 17:10, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The section regarding advantages and disadvantages of liberal democracy could certainly be moved to the liberal democracy article. For anything else, please be more specific.Ultramarine 10:26, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Be specific, eh?  Move to sub-article.  Direct Democracy isn't on the main democracy page.  It has its own page within the democracy organizational structure; a sub-article, no?.  Copy that idea with the liberal and representative types; make them separate pages. --Landen99 21:57, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There are already separate pages for these subjects.Ultramarine 19:44, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I see that with Representative democracy, but why is there so much material on liberal democracy in the main Democracy article?  Why are non-representative types (like sortition) covered so much here instead of put on their own page?  --Landen99 22:16, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have already stated that the "advantages and disadvantages of liberal democracy" could be moved to the liberal democracy article. Is there something else? Regarding "non-representative types", they are also forms of democracy, according to their supporters, and should therefore also be presented.Ultramarine 22:26, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed.  I would suggest organizing the types by categorizing them in representative and non-representative. --Landen99 16:45, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not easily done, for example Socialist democracy can be both.Ultramarine 18:25, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree.  Quick, preliminary consideration reveals that many other forms can also be both, yet the inability to distinguish between the various forms in some impartial manner leaves the article with little organization.  Every experiment in democracy has been a hybrid of all of the basic elements/building blocks.  We can at least distinguish them based on practice:  modern (currently practiced), "extinct" (not now, but formerly practiced), and theory (never practiced, but academic/published only). --Landen99 15:26, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Also this will be controversial, with for example anti-Communists arguing that the Communist states had socialist democracy, which obviously many socialists disagree.Ultramarine 23:41, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The controversy of the type of democracy or government should NOT affect its status in the categories of: practiced, practicing, and academic (theory). --Landen99 13:39, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Unfortunately they do, as in my example.Ultramarine 17:25, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

text: How?  Whatever form communism took, the fact that their form and socialist democracy are both practicing is not disputable.  Is communism practicing?  Of course.  See Cuba and China.  Is social democracy practicing?  Of course.  See Europe.  What happens to this subject beyond the classification of "practicing" is beyond this discussion, and also no stranger to the current method of organization.  This proposal for a new organization seems to have no bearing on the dispute.  But I really do think that focusing on the elements of democracy is better than focusing on all the hybrid forms constructed from those elements, as it would seem to simplify the organization and consideration of the subject and quickly resolve the issue which you presented.  --Landen99 17:18, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposal to disambiguate Democracy

message: I have reverted these once again (diff).  Obvious problems include
* the implication that representative democracy is fairly characterized as "the lesser of two evils"
* scare quotes around "free and fair elections"
* the use of Cuba and Saddam's Iraq as the only exemplars in what appears to be a slanted discussion of compulsory voting laws
* various other baffling bits apparently driven by your idiosyncratic ideas of demos/voter identity, or whatever
Frankly, my eyes glaze at multi-paragraph screeds with phrases such as "irrefutable facts", "universal truths" and the like.  If you really think your edits are an improvement heartlessly being suppressed, feel free to invite a cross-section of the Wikipedia community to visit the article.  You might want to place a (neutral) notice on the WP:RFC/POLITICS page or other suitable venue, for instance.  In the vanishingly small likelihood that they gain a consensus I'll be happy to let them stay. - David Oberst 04:28, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You personally see this a a great problem. I see many advantages. But there is a section with criticisms and advantages for where these things are discussed.Ultramarine 07:43, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Repeated reversions 

message: Material deleted from the Representatives section: 
Modern representatives are free to advance their own changing agendas without requiring approval from their constituents, being restrained only by periodic re-election, and impeachment (citing Representative democracy article). Hence the saying that elections are simply "voting for the lesser of two evils" [] because no candidate is bound to the will of the people. It should be noted that "free and fair elections" typically take the will of the majority of the voters, and hold them as the will of the majority of the demos or representatives, respectively, thus giving credence to the saying that "It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority .." (Samuel Adams) to energize a majority of the votes in such common programs as Get out the vote, where a faction seeks political domination by the relative majority of the votes.
Revisions refused from the Limited Voting section: 
Some see a problem with the limited voter turnout typical of modern democracies since not all eligible voters participate in the political process. Get out the vote campaigns tend to increase voter turnout by political activism of special interest groups. Some people argue for compulsory voting and several nations, e.g., Australia, have this system, but others argue for non-compulsory voting based on the will of the majority of all eligible voters. Proponents argue that this increases the legitimacy of the elections and empowers political participation by all those affected by the political process. In a compulsory voting system, such as in Cuba or in Sadam Hussein's Iraq (before the American liberation of Iraq), political parites do not have to spend time and energy convincing voters that they should vote at all, but instead may divert their attentions to simply advancing their political agendas. Arguments against compulsory voting include restriction of freedom, economic costs of enforcing this, increased number of invalid and blank votes, and random voting. Arguments for free voting and full majority rule include legitimacy, while opponents cite the difficulty of uniting the people on any given issue enough to motivate them to vote on it; despite the fact that the people may have no interest in considering many of the issues put on the ballot.
--Landen99 16:15, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You personally see this a a great problem. I see many advantages. But there is a section with criticisms and advantages for where these things are discussed.Ultramarine 07:43, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:   Material removed without just consideration or discussion 

message: I added a tag to this section.  Please see WP:AWW.  Especially with the most recent addition (diff), this seems to read like a textbook case of the problems described at WP:AWW; see especially the "few simple questions" section near the beginning.  This is the problem with these sorts of "criticism" or "for and against" sections - they all too often devolve into a catchall area for unsourced, vague, unfocussed, backdoor POV or otherwise troublesome text that normally wouldn't survive in a well-written Wikipedia article.  Not that this is the only subhead with this problem, but it is the clearest example, and hopefully the tag will help attract some additional editors interested in improving the article.  [Note that the phrase "weasel" is the existing Wikipedia term and part of the template, and should not be considered pejorative]. - David Oberst 02:40, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Tag on "Direct Democracy" section

message: I challenge the order of the types/varieties of Democracy.  Sortition is not the first idea to come to mind on the subject for anyone.  Alphabetical order is more impartial, but prominence in practice order is probably much more useful and neutral.  That would put liberal democracy and representative democracy at the top, not sortition and tribal democracy (possibly the two rarest forms of democracy seen on this planet).  Additionally, the title of this section, Varieties of Democracy, would read better as Types of Democracy.  --Landen99 21:16, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Good idea. The subarticle is named "Varieties" and  the difference to to "Types" does not seem very significant.Ultramarine 19:41, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The word "Types" is more commonly used in cases like these.  Readers will find a more uniform and familiar feel to the organization with my suggested title.  --Landen99 22:32, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: How about "Forms of democracy"? Gets 5 times more Google hits than "Types of democracy"Ultramarine 21:27, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Agreed. --Landen99 15:14, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Varieties section ordered for bias 

message: I would like to suggest that:
* The Democracy article be organized by its principle elements of democracies forming the sections, such as: representation, suffrage, constitution, division of powers, liberalism, socialism, sortition, and famous quotes.
* The types of democracy be organized into past, present, and future, and classified by the principle elements from which each is constructed.  All other details being reserved for the linked page dedicated to each type.  The order of elements within each section should probably follow either the degree to which each has been popular or the timeline of their introduction to the world knowledge. --Landen99 14:11, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Many forms of democracy do not have suffrage, constitution, division of powers, and socialism, so not possible. Quotes should be in Wikiquote. Regarding organizing types, your division again will cause difficulty, for example socialists and their critics will dispute where to place socialist democracy.Ultramarine 17:23, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with your assessment on quotes, but on the others, it is possible.  Who says that every form of democracy must contain every element of democracy when each is classified by those elements?  The idea would be that each form of democracy would be introduced by the elements which classify it.  For instance, this form contains the following elements of democracy: yada yada yada.  In these cases, it also contains this element.  etc.  --Landen99 17:59, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestions for improving the organization 

message: One editor insists that his prefered view is the only true definition of democracy and ignores the many other sourced views regarding what democracy is. He also misrepresentes the view of one source, Dahl, seee the Polyarchy article for a correct view.Ultramarine 17:07, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have trouble believing that "often" is an accurate or useful description of the frequency of people using "democracy" when they really mean polyarchy. - David Oberst 17:24, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: One editor (and an apparent sock puppet) insists on inserting completely false statements into the preamble of the entry. Somehow, a reference to an article by a two-bit political hack carries more weight the consesnsus opinion as described by the pre-eminent scholar of democracy in the US. --Drono 20:57, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I favor the Drono version in the recent edit war.  I wish this article was not such a attractant for wars over ideology, involving ownership of the definition of the word 'democracy'.  BruceHallman 21:13, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It is Drono that claims ownership, insisting that Democracy only means his prefered version and nothing else. A definition which is also not the definition used by Dahl, see the Polyarchy article. I want a neutral intro not claiming that democracy means only one thing. There are numerous wildly different definitions of "democracy" as noted in the article.Ultramarine 22:19, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

text: If you want to get rid of the "Zakaria" ref, be my guest.  And perhaps the "all citizens are politically equal" is a better lead than "often refers to representative, liberal democracy" - I gave up trying to improve the writing style quite some time ago.  But for the lead paragraph of a major article like "Democracy" to claim that what is "often" meant is actually a different term is quite something else, and not at all obvious to me, and unless it is supported by a consensus of other editors, I'm going to assume it is merely the (persistent) viewpoint of a single individual, one whose credibility with me is not enhanced by obviously silly allegations of sockpuppetry. - David Oberst 21:20, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Polyarchy seems an important concept that ultramarine raised, but is too complex to cover, so I referenced it at the bottom. Just revert it if you object, I won't object. Raggz 22:13, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introduction 

message: I just heard in a BBC documentary about the origins of Sierra Leone that is was the first country (anywhere, ever) that had elections in which women could participate (must have been 1792 or 1793). Of course this probably ignores similar democracies on a more tribal level, but still it might be called the first truly democratic country in a western sense. Is that right? DirkvdM 16:34, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I do not know, but try asking the people at Universal suffrage.Ultramarine 16:38, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sierra Leone 

message: The author writes;
'The United States Constitution, adopted in 1788, provided for an elected government and protected civil rights and liberties. However, in the colonial period before 1776, only adult white male property owners could vote; enslaved Africans, free black people and women were not extended the franchise.'
Having pointed out that only white male property owners could vote prior to 1776, the impression is given that voting rights must have changed post 1788. In fact nothing changed. It was still only white male property owners who could vote. This would not change for a further 68 years when the right to vote was extended to all white males. Women got universal suffrage in 1920, while more than 20 million blacks were still being denied the vote until 1965. See 'Voting rights in the United States'
The article is therefore misleading and should be changed. If it is to state who could or could not vote before 1776, then it should include who could or could not vote post 1776.
Dendeb 13:44, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  18th and 19th centuries