Talk:Juan Cole/Archive 14

message: I also deleted the reference to the "furious debate in the blogosphere". It didn't fit in the edit summary box.--CSTAR 03:00, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent edit 

message: I added a few sentences about the fact that Cole's response, and thus much of the content of the paragraph, was inspired by JC's (old) wikipedia article. It is worth noting, since wikipedia and wikipedians, at least in JC's view played some roll in this incident. This is from the same JC post alre,ady cited, so I just moved the ref down rather than repeating it. Wachholder0 17:18, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sentence reads: Cole complained that right-wingers keep distorting wikipedia articles about him, and responded directly to Karsh in his blog. Cole cited here: Juan Cole: Complains that rightwingers keep distorting Wiki entries about him. At the time he wrote the blog post, there were two Cole articles, this and "Views and Controversies". V&C has since been deleted as a POV Fork. Is this acceptable? <<-armon->> 02:17, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: WP's roll in Karsh response

message: :In 2001, Cole criticized journalist Robert Fisk in a letter to the London Independent for charging the U.S. with "war crimes" in Afghanistan. Cole argued that the U.S. presence in Afghanistan would likely prevent a large scale famine: "If Mr Fisk is so upset about the death of a few hundred murderous thugs who went back on their word to surrender and viciously fell upon their captors, how would he have felt about five million corpses in the great Taliban famine? If this mass-scale starvation is avoided, it will be because of the brave US pilots whom Mr Fisk slanders as criminals."[13]
This looks more like an attempt to argue that Cole is "tougher" on the WOT than Fisk (not difficult) than a presentation of his views. Is the reader meant to infer that Cole supported the war against the Taliban, or that Cole doesn't think US troops are war criminals? These are two different issues. Rather than leaving it to inferences, we should simply state Cole's position and cite them. A letter to the editor criticizing someone else's position is not the best way to do this. <<-armon->> 02:05, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a direct quote from Cole's letter and is far preferable to a summary of Cole's position presented by a Wikipedia editor who is virulently anti-Cole. csloat 02:11, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Now that we've got that out of way, any other comments? <<-armon->> 11:36, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Your explicit argument is that a direct quote should be paraphrased in order to change the intended meaning. I'm open to a suggested rewrite if one is presented, but I'm opposed in principle to the sentiment. Chris Cunningham 15:38, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow I didn't realize that was my explicit argument. I thought I'd asked for clarification of his position with better cites. BTW, what did you think I was going to do, hide the fact he's against famine? <<-armon->> 02:16, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I had no idea what you were planning to do, to be honest, but what you actually said was that a letter presented in Cole's own words was a poorer reference for his opinions than a theoretical paraphrasing of them linked to some other citations. And what I said was that I didn't agree with the sentiment, but I'd be happy to change my mind were the theoretical rewrite and accompanying citations an improvement. Chris Cunningham 09:11, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Wikipedia is not quote farm. When a response is overly confusing or contains ad hominem that may be adversely prejudicial to either party (and Cole's responses are usually both, so we are doing him a favor), or just for reasons of copy-editing, we can summarize. In fact, our default behavior should be to summarize, and only to quote directly where there is an exceptional reason to do so. - Merzbow 18:19, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If someone could suggest what they think is wrong with the current section and explain why it should be changed and what it should be changed to, perhaps there would be more to go on; at this point the dispute over this section is entirely theoretical. csloat 10:06, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Read this section -or even the post immediately above yours. It unclear what his position was on the Afghanistan war, a letter to the editor disputing US troops are war crims is a poor cite, and  poor way to present his views, WP is not a quote-farm. By a better cite, I'm looking for his views on the subject published somewhere. <<-armon->> 23:12, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Views on Afghanistan