Talk:Michael Ignatieff/Archive 4

message: I've just deleted the following line from the section on Ignatieff's political careerL
:The fact that the other candidates who contested the nomination were only given 36 hours to do so, and then found the provincial HQ to be "closed" (although workers inside refused to answer the phones or the doors) is continually erased by Ignatieff's staff on this site.
Although this is funny (actually, I'm not an Ignatieff staffer, I'm his mother. Now you leave my little Iggypoo alone! He's a good boy! j/k), it obviously has no place in the article. However, does the information it relates belong elsewhere in the article? I suppose a subsection in the Controversy section could be made to present all the gripes surrounding Ignatieff's nomination. Here's why that idea bothers me: anyone who has been to a riding association meeting knows that there's always factions, and they're always bickering. I don't think that sort of infighting is really important to the general public, only to the internal factions themselves. On that note, let's all try, when working on this article, to keep the audience in mind. Wikipedia is written for the general public. This article should provide someone who doesn't know anything about Ignatieff with a basic outline of who he is, why he is significant, what have been his main contributions to his fields (political, literary, and academic), and what he has done. We have not come to bury Michael, or to praise him, just to report as factually as possible the aspects of his public life that a member of the *general public* would think important. Joel Bastedo 16:23, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The section reads much cleaner now. Kudos. 198.20.40.50 19:55, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If the 36 hours quote is going in there, we need a source. While I agree with J.B. that it's unneccessary (gripes about riding association protocols don't belong here), there's absolutely no way it should be included unless a reputable news source can be found to cite. 72.139.184.107 22:35, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nomination controversy 

message: This section could also be condensed by paraphrashing views and then citing to the quote or the work. As it is now, there are some quotes (ie: on equality / multiculturalism) on that could be summed up in shorter paraphrasing paragraphs, providing more room for additional ideas / information on other works etc. Thoughts? -- Finnegans wake 18:11, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ideas Section 

message: Several wiki users have made changes to the wording of the article that Neutralizer consistently reverts. Could we please get a consensus on these changes, rather than continue the ongoing revert war? 72.139.184.107 22:29, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The recent edits by 24.203.229.116 are reasonable and NPOV. 65.95.149.188 13:24, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Guys, this would be so much easier to follow if you would get user accounts.  Please. -Joshuapaquin 16:12, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wording issues and NPOV 

message: *When a political leader who calls himself a Liberal writes many things like this;"To defeat evil, we may have to traffic in evils: indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war." and when that same person who wants to lead Canada wrote 4 years ago; "I believed in America in a way Canada did not allow"; then controversy will be as rampant and overpowering as if George Bush were to announce he is in favour of a guaranteed annual income for all citizens, withdrawing U.S. forces from overseas deployment and free socialized health care, and says "I believed in Canada in a way America did not allow." 
*It's not our fault Iggy is controversial; it'll be our fault if we don't recognize the very real and dramatic extent of the controversies. 65.95.149.188 13:37, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's fine but keep in mind that we have to write about the actual controversy, in the real world, and not what we personally feel is objectionable.  --JGGardiner 15:07, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed.  It is not for us to determine what should be notable and relevant, only what is. -Joshuapaquin 16:15, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed. As we can see, many, many people have determined that the controversial aspects of Ignatieff's views are extremely notable and relevant which explains the enormous public and media record that addresses the controversial aspects. It is wrongheaded to pretend that the extent of the controversies is being exagerated here as ,in fact, if anything, the controversies and confusion surrounding what,if anything, this subject truly believes, are being quite well kept reined in and minimized; perhaps even too much so for an objective encyclopedia. 64.229.187.20 01:30, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Restating highly POV positions hardly makes them "facts" or encyclopedic.  The first comment here is a recitation of the tired saws of anti-Ignatieff activists; out of context quotations arranged so as to approach the level of falsehoods.  There is a reason why this is the only - only - supposedly non-biased information source that is so rampantly controversy-centric and critical; because of editors using it as a political instrument.  It's extremely unfortunate and strident recapitulations of your hostile feelings are not serving any "fact-facing" or collaborative purpose. There are blogs and websites where wrongheaded, fact-free soapbox sermonizing is the appropriate content; please keep it there. --Haligonian Lucullus 18:47, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Let's face facts 

message: Under the torture section, we have 6 sources (17-22) which pretty much say the same thing - that there are a lot of human rights scholars who disagree with Ignatieff. While I'm not trying to censore any of them, I'm curious if we really need this many. Can the same point be made with fewer quotes? 72.139.184.107 23:14, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The sources are there for those who are interested and they take up little space. Please leave them be. 64.229.187.20 01:21, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sir, yes, sir!. Any other opinions? 72.139.184.107 04:13, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

text: I had said in my edit summary that I was fine with multiple sources, and I am, as long as they are helpful.  I think that the source should be there to demonstrate the statement in the text.  I think including so many is not needed and may have a "POV" effect.  If the sources are just further reading, that's fine but I'd move them to the links section.  Since two of them are already there, I'm going to remove those as sources and keep them in the links section.  --JGGardiner 04:26, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Torture citations on human rights 

message: I've taken a look at some of the articles on other controversial political figures (Bush, Blair, Harper, etc...), and none of them have links to "Opponent Sites" as does Ignatieff's. Does this seem inconsistent to anyone else?
:That's probably more about the grouping than content.  Only Stop Iggy is really an opponent website.  One of the others is an article which highlights some controversies and the other is a negative editorial.  --JGGardiner 05:35, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I may open a can of worms by suggesting this, but do we want to lose the Stop Iggy website and maybe try to find a few more op-ed pieces or review articles, instead? It just seems anti-Iggy to have opponent links when Bush or Harper's articles don't. 198.20.40.50 16:41, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm fine with that.  The page has little content, most of which is available elsewhere (if not in the article) and is only there to demonstrate that people don't like Ignatieff.  That is already well-documented in the article and the other sources.  And not even one anti-Ignatieff Liberal was willing to attach their name to that site.  All it really does is show that at least one anti-Ignatieff Liberal can make a webpage.  --JGGardiner 17:10, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've seperated the articles by Ignatieff from the rest, and will combine the critical Op-Ed pieces from Opponent Sites with the Commentary and Review section. Stop iggy can probably be dropped - as you said, all it shows is that at least one anti-Ignatieff Liberal can make a webpage. Most of the legitimate criticisms can be found in the other pieces, too. 198.20.40.50 18:28, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Okay, I've added newspapers and dates for all the articles I could, but can't seem to find anything for the James Laxer article. As far as I can tell, it's just a blog entry. If no one objects, I'm going to recommend this link be deleted - blogs (even those of university profs) probably shouldn't be used as encyclopedic references. 198.20.40.50 18:38, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm fine with deleting it.  I don't mind the blog part so much.  My problem is just that it is quite short, albeit well-written, and really says nothing unique.  --JGGardiner 20:40, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Opponent Sites 

message: I've cleaned up a few of the references, but the article could use the help of a dedicated wikipedian or two to get some consistency in the format and style of the links. Any brave souls want to volunteer? 198.20.40.50 19:29, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Citations

message: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NPOV#Undue_weight is the policy on undue weight; I think it's valuable reading given that this is still in large measure the "Ignatieff Controversy Article" given the title Michael Ignatieff.  The policy seems fairly clear; random IPs and the Etobicoke Lakeshore NDP riding association are not prominent adherents.  I'm not sure if there's a specific tag for 'undue weight,' but I can't find it if there is. --Haligonian Lucullus 15:14, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Undue Weight

message: Someone who knows how might want to archive topics not discussed in the last few days, as we're at 87k on the talk page. --Haligonian Lucullus 15:14, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done.  For what it's worth, you can create an archive simply by going to a new page name in your browser (e.g. "Talk:Michael Ignatieff/Archive3") and pasting in the text.  -Joshuapaquin 20:22, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Talk Page is Getting Long

message: I've cleaned up this section a bit, but I have to ask: why is this in the Controversies section? There's nothing there about any controversy, except that Ignatieff acknowledged his position was controversial among liberals. Can it be moved to the Ideas section?
PS: This has gotten me thinking. As Joshua Paquin has pointed out, the Controversies section is currently just "a list of ideas attributed to Ignatieff that are assumed to be controversial" and "contains little to no citation that the listed items are, in fact, notably controversial." Could we do away with the subsections in the Controversies section (and eventually in the Ideas section too, perhaps), and just have a paragraph or two (or however many are needed) outlining which of the various ideas mentioned in the idea section have been controversial, with references to the printed media in which these controversies have been waged? Joel Bastedo 15:25, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Invasion of Iraq 

message: Regarding my suggestion made under Invasion of Iraq, I'm thinking in particular of these three subsections: 
:4.2 Invasion of Iraq
:4.3 Ballistic missile defense
:4.4 Torture
With slight modifications, Torture could be combined with The lesser evil approach, while Invasion of Iraq and Ballistic missile defense could be combined in a subsection called something like "On foreign policy" or "Empire lite." How about this?
:3 Ideas
::3.1 On Canadian rights culture
::3.2 On equality rights
::3.3 The lesser evil approach (including 4.4 Torture)
::3.4 Empire lite (Including a brief (one sentence) introduction of his idea of "empire lite" and a description of the implications of that idea in terms of American foreign policy, including 4.2 Invasion of Iraq and 4.3 Ballistic missile defense)
:4 Controversies
Introductory paragraph explaining that several of his ideas have incurred criticism from human rights scholars and other observers, particularly those that seem to endorse American expansionism, with citations as appropriate. Then some kind of blurb saying that, with Ignatieff's entry into elected politics in the fall of 2005, new criticisms have been levelled against him from his political opponents, regarding his national self-identity, and his opinions on Ukranian Canadians (and possibly the ethics of his nomination?). Then we'd have the two remaining sections from Controversies to explain: 
::4.1 Doubts about his national self-identity
::4.2 Remarks about Ukranian-Canadians
How does all that sound? Joel Bastedo 15:49, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That sounds good to me.  It seems like you've put a lot of thought and time into it.  Sometimes it is easy to forget how much an article can suffer from disorganization.  Although I think that it will require some care on the last part to avoid "POV" accusations.  --JGGardiner 02:25, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. -Joshuapaquin 03:55, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Appreciate the effort.  Is the intended length on controversies going to be roughly the same?  As much as reorganization would clean things up, my undue weight issue with the page is still based on the disproportionate size of the controversy treatment as compared to treatments elsewhere and with reference to the standards of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NPOV#Undue_weight --Haligonian Lucullus 18:23, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I imagine it would be considerably shorter for two reasons. First, there is currently some repetition between the ideas and controversies sections. Second, some of what is now in the controversies section (notably the War in Iraq subsection) isn't really controversy (it's just an idea which many people disagree with), so although most of the information will remain, the recategorization will help provide the balance you're looking for. Joel Bastedo 22:42, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Combining Controversies and Ideas 

message: Originally, I was planning to flush out the "List of articles by Ignatieff" but have discovered that he's a more prolific writer than I originally thought. Thus, there are lots of articles by him - maybe too many to list under this entry. So, here's the question: Which ones should we link to and/or list? I'm tempted to say "Important Ones", but that's a can of worms I'm not certain I want to open. So should we list all of them? Only ones that are on-line? Only the controversial ones (and risk undue weight)? I've included a version that goes back to 2002 - suggestions on where to take this would be much appreciated. Ideally, I'd also like to find a solution that doesn't involve triplicate "References/External Links/Biography" links. 198.20.40.50 18:47, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of articles by Ignatieff