Talk:Social situation in the French suburbs/Archive 1

message: It is extremely bad etiquette to remove a "merge" tag without discussion (in fact it is against the rules, but I don't feel like wikilawyering). Please do not remove the tag until a consensus develops either way.
If you oppose the proposal, you should discuss in the centralized thread in the  article,  in this case Allegations of apartheid. I will restore the tagging, and add a note in the correct thread. Thanks!--Cerejota 00:38, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You didn't state a reason for doing so, and the article is 14k long and almost 1900 words. It's far too big to merge. Please stop using tags as a weapon to deface articles you don't like. Jayjg (talk) 04:32, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Jayjg, it is false that I did not provide a rationale. I did so here in the correct talk page, which is the talk page of the  page. I ask you please apologize for misrepresenting me.--Cerejota 05:19, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right, I apologize. Jayjg (talk) 22:22, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Just don't lose your cool like that, it is embarassing to watch ;). You can be a hard ass, but I have learned that you are ultimately just with does with good faith. Thats freaking important if this is to be The Encyclopedia.--Cerejota 00:15, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge proposal 

message: Can we continue this debate after the AFD result comes in?  Thanks, --Urthogie 14:26, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Why? we do not support it, so why should it matter? I am doing a DRV if delete is the outcome, because it would be an unjust deletion of notable, properly sourced content. However, I am confident it wont come to that.--Cerejota 00:21, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  article is undergoing AFD proposal 

message: I think there has been some sort of error.  The notes section is an exactly duplicate of the references section in the article.  15 each.  The order is slightly different though.  I thought it was an intentional error but someone just reverted my fix of it.  --CGM1980 15:52, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Notes and references are different. Notes are tied to specific items in the text; References are an alphabetical listing of every single source used in an article. Notes may use sources multiple times, in multiple ways (different quotes, different page numbers); references list sources only once. Notes include page numbers; references include ISBN numbers. For a better example of how this works, see Rudolf Vrba. In this case, some of the notes also contain quotations backing the claims advanced for them, which also makes them different. Jayjg (talk) 16:09, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Separate sections for notes and references is useful when a piece of writing draws upon a large fund of research that is only partially represented by the specific citations.   In this case, having both sections seems weird because the notes and references are virtually identical.  They are virtually identical because the "research" for the article consisted entirely of gathering citations, in an automated fashion through search engines.  When a subject is researched not by reading books and article but by data-mining for key-word quotes, the resulting article's references will be identical to its citations.--G-Dett 21:47, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notes / References duplication 

message: They are both shorter, and less original researchy.--Cerejota 12:42, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  heading change 

message: I just quote the article :
Tariq Ramadan, a French Muslim,...
But, according to Tariq Ramadan, the man seems to be a Swiss Muslim...
Flying jacket 15:25, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: He's both.  Lives in France-- french citizen.--Urthogie 15:28, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm afraid to tell you that I don't find any reference to his french nationality through the Internet. Could it be an unreferenced assertion ? Flying jacket 15:45, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My mistake.  He is a scholar of French society, not a Frenchman himself.--Urthogie 16:34, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've just changed that. Had not seen the current talk, sorry. --Ouicoude 16:37, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

text: Tarik ramadan is NOT a scholar of French society, he is a scholar of islam. Miuki 07:29, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Amazing... 

message: Since the AfD is over, I think its time to focus on quotefarm (ie quality).
I will just be bold and do my edits. They will be mostly switch sourced material to encyclopedic voice, rather than quotes, whenever possible.
Thanks!--Cerejota 15:23, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You have my full support on this one. There are way too much quotes in this article. It looks like a newspaper article, and It should not. NicDumZ ~ 14:58, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quotefarm 

message: Calling the french treatment of certain categories of people an "apartheid" is a funny idea, as France is one of the only countries where the nation doesn't recognize "races" (I quote this ugly word) and that gives the very same treatment to all religions. It might be hard to believe for some non-french, but there is absolultely no way to count the amout of french people who are "black" or "white" or "blue" or "green", as this information has no legal existence : it's not on the id card, not on the medical files, it just exists on the police document, along the eyes colour and the existence of tatoos. In a same way, religion is not a public matter, it is something you do at home, like any hobby. It is not possible, therefore, to tell who is a catholic, a jew, a lutherian, a muslim or an atheist, and to count such people. And of course, people love who they want to.
Well my point is that "apartheid" is not racism, it is a legally cristalized racism. Of course, racism exists in France like everywhere in the world (if you want to find a stupid and mean man, just seek for any man, he'll do fine), but it is not organized by the nation. The word "apartheid" is not well-used. But what is the most funny is that this article quotes Tariq Ramadan who is among the people who ask for a real separation between the "communities" even though they don't exist in a legal way : he allegates France to be in the situation of the south african apartheid, but he does all he can to get to that. I see that on the en: article about Ramadan, he is known as a reformer, well he is not known as that here : he is a skillful and hansome proselyt who doesn't say the same things on french mass medias (a french muslim is french before being muslim...) and on the tapes he spreads in the suburbs (...unless it is against the Qran). Basicaly, most of the specialists, like Antoine Sfeir (very famous analyst) think that Tariq Ramadan is a fondamentalist.
Anyways, I hope there will be a way to do anything of that page but for me it is as stupid as if the fr: wikipedia had an article as "Allegations of George Bush being a nazi" : nazism, like apartheid, are well-defined organizations, well defined historic periods, one sometimes use them as insults, because they are strong words, but it is (sorry) a little stupid to use them litterally concerning a contemporary subject. Jean-no 00:11, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Just one other thing : I'm just talking about the present situation. In the colonial era and under the governement of Vichy, there have been a "racial" treatment of people in France (but inter-cultural/racial/religions marriage has never been forbidden as far as I know, even during the slavery period). Jean-no
This is exactly what I tried to explain during the AFD before being thrown out of the debate by the author of the article himself because I never wrote in other AFDs before (There should be a first time, you know).
Many good arguments were raised against "allegation of French apartheid" but they were considered unconvincing by those who finally decided to keep the article. Most people in favour of "deletion" were classified as biaised French editors who wanted to defend their country's reputation.
I think this appreciation was wrong because many French people like you and me tried to explain that France does not have any legal segregation system but face instead social segregation and racism. These problems are sometime mentionned in a metaphoric way as "social apartheid" (I think this metaphor is inadequate, but THIS SUBJECT could be rightly discussed as THIS OPINION OF MINE IS ONLY AN OPINION).
Admitting France actual problems while denying imaginary ones seems to me to be a balanced approach and a worthy contribution to an encyclopedia.
The fact that blatantly inaccurate articles can survive untouched in Wikipedia is unfortunate. When I will find the time for this, I will maybe add a comment to the article itself (with proper sourcing) to show that NO LEGAL SEGREGATION SYSTEM exists in France.
Jeemde 10:55, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Weird page ! 

message: “Allegations of French apartheid draw analogies between France and apartheid-era South Africa” 
At last, an introductory sentence truly fitting for a serious, reliable encyclopedia ! Thank’s to this budding “Allegations of X country being the new apartheid South-Africa” series, to be followed, hopefully, by “Allegations of personnality X being the new Hitler”, Wikipedia should eventually break away from its previous image as a Pokemon and porn actresses thesaurus. Allow me to pay hommage to the geniuses who initiated this project. Watch your back, EB! Miuki 08:05, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  A truly wonderful idea 

message: I'd like to discuus the relevance of this article.
Regardless of the subject or of the neutrality of it, the biggest problem of it to me, is that the whole article looks like a long list of different views of different authors about the subject. It would help a lot (especially about the neutrality problem !) to have a clear and concise article, a synthesis of the ideas which would rely on the different views of the authors. 
The problem might come from the title of the article in itself, because allegations sort of refer to a list, but the AfD is over and it was decided that the article will not be renamed. Though i do not agree with that prospective, i'll try to do my best to combine all that quotes in something more simplet and easier to understand.
Also, try not to overquote. Some references are used twice or thrice. The result of this is that it seems that the subject is lacking of serious sources, and that for this reason, you use several times the same quote to make your point. A reader does not need to read thrice a quote for it to make its effect. 
NicDumZ 18:33, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Regarding "overquotes", the reason almost all references are used twice in this article is because User:Rama refused to actually look at the sources, so they had to be repeated in the introduction. Jayjg (talk) 06:53, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relevance 

message: Allegations of Chinese apartheid, which is another of Urthogie's creations, is currently up for deletion. Editors here may wish to have a look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Allegations of Chinese apartheid. -- ChrisO 07:37, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Related article up for deletion 

message: See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_France#Allegations_of_French_apartheid Teofilo talk 09:26, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal to remove the "Wikiproject France" label 

message: I agree with the idea of renaming the article to Segregation in France or something along those lines (it affects more than just the suburbs, so I wouldn't limit it just to that). When I renamed the "Allegations of Northern Irish apartheid" as Segregation in Northern Ireland, I had three policy considerations in mind:
1) Whether or not "apartheid" is a word to avoid (currently it isn't), "allegations" certainly is - see WP:WTA#So-called, soi-disant, supposed, alleged, purported. Note in particular the following: "These all share the theme of explicitly making it clear that a given statement is not necessarily factual. This connotation introduces unnecessary bias into the writing; Wikipedia maintains a neutral point of view, and in general, there will be someone out there who will view a given statement as highly probable." 
2) Policy requires that article titles comply with NPOV. See WP:NCON#Descriptive names (which, I should mention, I wrote a couple of years ago). This is more complicated than it may seem - the East Sea/Sea of Japan controversy is a case in point - but the core principle, as set out in WP:NCON, is that article titles should "not carry POV implications". The political term "apartheid" carries enormous POV implications; the sociological term "segregation" does not. When faced with a choice between a POV title and an NPOV one, we must choose the latter.
3) There is nothing in policy - or for that matter in common sense - to support the proposition that fixing one unsatisfactory article has to wait on fixing a separate article. If article A is bad, and article B is bad, the obvious answer is to fix both articles at the first opportunity. The rate of progress may vary between articles, but that's to be expected, because there are different editors and issues involved.
As for the way ahead for this article, I suggest taking the same approach that I adopted with Segregation in Northern Ireland. It needs to be built around a consistent framework, something which this article conspicously lacks. I suggest subdividing it into sections covering social, economic and political segregation. It should be possible to reuse much of the existing content to fill out these subsections, in just the same way that I did with Northern Ireland. -- ChrisO 23:07, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some policy comments 

message: Who would like to undertake the process of merging the articles now that consensus has been determined? I've done a preliminary merge but it needs to be gone over. Lothar of the Hill People 03:20, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I may. But please, explain every changes you do here. I'm a bit lost in all your contribs. What have you done so far ? Merging the part about Algeria in French rule in Algeria ? right ? Then all that needs to be done now is to merge the rest into Social situation in the French suburbs ? NicDumZ ~ 07:26, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merging