User:Rursus/Setnemgarhp

Editing principles

For me that is. Tasks:

1. T: typos, formulations
2. E: error correction
3. A: adding explanations
4. C: criticism
5. D: deletion
6. αω: creation
7. F: figures

Applying it in "spheres":

name	T	E	A	C	D	αω	F	comment
astronomy	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	I'm very knowledgeable
religion	Y	n	(Y)	Y	(Y)	n	Y	I'm somewhat knowledgeable
compsci	Y	Y	Y	Y	(Y)	Y	Y	My profession, however: the terminology sucks because of interference from the market
maths	Y	Y	(Y)	Y	n	n	n	I'm somewhat knowledgeable
biology	Y	n	n	Y	n	n	n	I'm somewhat knowledgeable
history	Y	(Y)	(Y)	n	Y	n	n	I'm somewhat knowledgeable
other	Y	n	n	n	Y	n	n	--

I'm an inclusionist, so I nominate articles for deletion just if it is a mixture of bogus and verily not notable. I just nominated the two articles Atmospheric beast and Manichaean paranoia for deletion, the first one because the article creator coined the UFO-fringe outside science term, the second one because it was a neologism used by one person and because the connection between Manichaeism and Paranoia couldn't be explained in any credible way (see below).

Killing "Manichaean paranoia"

I'm saving "Manichaean paranoia" here in order to document a Wikipedia article deletion process. The phrase was coined by Zbigniew Brzezinski and some wikipedian thought it was a term and documented it here. The development process of the article soon came to a point where it occurred that the phrase was of a dubious construction, not widely spread, and so the prolonged existence of the article couldn't be justified.

User:Rursus/Clarifyme User:Rursus/Dubious User:Rursus/Fact

Manichaean paranoia

<!-- {{neologism|date=December 2008}} ENFORCED BY NEXT TEMPLATE TAG: -->
{{Notability|date=January 2009}}
{{Original research|date=January 2009}}

Manichaean paranoia is a rhetorical phrase used in one television show by the American politician Zbigniew Brzezinski to describe the morals of the George W. Bush presidency over USA. Since then it has become an article on Wikipedia that has promoted the phrase beyond what is the normal life length of rhetorical phrases, since blogs use to cite Wikipedia, and since there are a lot of encyclopedic web sites copying texts from Wikipedia.

In the The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Brzezinski "defines" the phrase thusly:

the notion that somehow or other he's [former president George W. Bush] leading the forces of good against the empire of evil, the notion that somehow or other in that setting, the fact that we are morally superior justifies us committing immoral acts

and otherwise pleads to the audience's education to accept this phrase as valid.

The term has its roots^{[Dubious ― Discuss]} in the ancient Persian religion Manichaeism, which held a dualistic view of the world — a viewpoint of black or white, enemy or friend.^{[Dubious ― Discuss]} It split the world into good (or light) and evil (darkness), which are in constant conflict.^{[Huh? Clarify!]} In Manichaean paranoia, this combines with a paranoia about the darkness, and the irrational fear that evil is actively out to "get" you, causing you to fight against it or be destroyed by it. This can lead to the justification of "evil" actions in the name of good.^{[Dubious ― Discuss]}

This intense dualism can lead to a moral polarization^{[Citation needed]}, where every position can take on either a morally good or morally evil cast, resulting in very little ground for neutrality.^{[Dubious ― Discuss]} Because everything is either morally good or morally evil, taking any position other than the good one can result in defaulting to evil. It is possible that those who criticize the morally good are seen as automatically morally evil, while those that pledge loyalty to the morally good are seen as morally good no matter the actions they commit.^{[Huh? Clarify!]}

There is a distinct similarity^{[Huh? Clarify!]} between this dualism and the dualism implied by the contrast in Christian and Islamic doctrines between Satan, the original and personal manifestation of evil in the world, and the absolute, eternal goodness of God. The only way to be saved, according to these belief systems, is to adhere to the correct faith. This is analogous to^{[Dubious ― Discuss]} the idea in Manichaean paranoia^{[Huh? Clarify!]} that loyalty to the correct ideals makes one morally good (regardless of what one might actually do).^{[Dubious ― Discuss]}

See also

...[snip slanderous links here]...

References

• William F. May, Manichaeism in American Politics, Christianity and Crisis, May 2, 1966

---

Saving place for talk (own analysis)

(random heading)

(inserted by ... said: Rursus (bork²) 13:09, 10 January 2009 (UTC))

...[snip earlier discussions]...

Notability of article

I think this article is blatantly non-notable bordering to bogus. The most of the 352 google hits on "Manichaean paranoia" (don't forget citation marks ") seems to either be copies of Wikipedia or citations of Wikipedia (which is a bad thing, this encyclopedia is a preparative study encyclopedia, for the rest primary sources should be used!). An independent definition or source of this alleged "Manichaean paranoia" should be established, or the article should be destroyed, usable fragments transfered to other articles, if such exist. I'll add a notability flag. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 13:16, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't Zbigniew on the daily show deliver an independent definition or do you just assume he read it on here first? There is a wikipedia article about Manichaeism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism There is a german website which lists a huge amount of sources ("Quellen") and Literature ("Lit"): http://www.bautz.de/bbkl/m/mani.shtml I found this: Manichean Dichotomy: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070422054150AA3qPbb But there is not much about the paranoia, which seems to be a twisted out of context version of the dualism in the Manichaeism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.57.251.154 (talk) 12:50, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Manichaeism is very notable because it was a world religion. But the concept "Manichaean paranoia" seems to be a rhetorical phrase (I guess) that has very little significance. The parts of this article that are usable should be integrated somewhere else, but I think the article in itself is built on a concept that is not notable. Or find the phrase in the texts of Irenaeus or Augustine of Hippo. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 19:49, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to destruct this article. It seems the phrase was coined for some rhetorical purpose that has nothing to do with real Manichaeism because it was a peace religion. (Irrespective of notability, the phrase was very badly thought-up, because it is deeply misleading). But as a first step, I propose to see if something of the text could be used for some other article. I won't mark the text for deletion until properly reading it through and salvaging what is to be salvaged. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 20:17, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Destruction preparations

1. Finding the relevant WP:policies

• template:delete - read here

... said: Rursus (bork²) 23:04, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Failed! Personally I think WP:NONSENSE (with the added attribute blatant) apply, but I wouldn't wager everybody agrees, and it destroys the fun of annihilating the article slowly. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 23:08, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:No original research I take being applicable, because the article seemingly tries to defend or reconstruct or explain a notion that cannot reasonably be citeable from the web. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 23:24, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

More precisely WP:SYNTH.

Wikipedia:Verifiability I take it fullfills neither.

Wikipedia:Notability of course. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 23:30, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

2. Screaming a little for frustration

OK, now I'm establishing whether there's a serious source for the concept, and it seems a certain Zbigniew Brzezinski (sounds like a Polish politician) coined the term, but searching the web and finding a lot of folks using "Manichaean paranoia" and citing Wikipedia makes me really angry!! Wikipedia is not all that constructive, obviously! It reminds me of killing an idiot article Atmospheric beast that someone coined here on Wikipedia, resulting in the term occurring on the web as if it was a real concept. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 23:39, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

3. Littering the article with templates

Using {{huh}} and {{fact}} and {{dubious}} and {{clarify}}. Now I'm going to sleep, but tomorrow I'll dissect all paragraphs in the article here, some are outright but unintentional lies (such as the notion coming from ancient Persia), most are speculations, interpretations and dubious low quality logic, that must be sourced if the article have had any chance of survival, which it hasn't because it can be sourced from one person in one talk show, and besides I'm really pissed that there are prominent links from the article Manichaeism to this bad article on a badly conceived rhetorical phrase. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 00:21, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

4. Slowly dissecting the failed logic

Debunking the text of the article.

First:

The term has its roots in the ancient Persian religion Manichaeism,

No, it hasn't! This is a quite false and ridiculous statement, it effectively says: "the Manichaeans claimed themselves being paranoid by religious considerations". The errors in such a statement are numerous, but we disregard it, because the author of the statement obviously didn't mean so. He meant: "the phrase has emerged as a reaction to the ancient Persian religion Manichaeism". Which only contains the bad-information-error: "our" (not mine actually) perceived view is perfectly inverted to reality and scholarly knowledge about Manichaeism, which was neither aggressive nor paranoid in any way. The phrase (not the article) fails at a reality check, but it's coiner might nevertheless mean that Manichaeism was an aggressive paranoid warrior religion, but lets consider it another and more scholarly correct way: let's speculate that Zbigniew Brzezinski actually meant that "Manichaean paranoia" was what the early church fathers demonstrated when attacking the peaceful Manichaeans verbally. Then the statement is unverified, and a quite opposite interpretation than the one in the article might safely be done.

, which held a dualistic view of the world — a viewpoint of black or white, enemy or friend.

Conclusion ill-founded. The Manichaeans, and dualists in general, held that the matter was evil, and that the souls were trapped in it. They interpreted worlds all evil, eating, killing and sexual reproduction (!) as evil and promoting the existence of this evil universe. The conclusion that the dichotomy "enemy or friend" belongs to here is factually quite wrong, but in order to save the article, it must be proved by citations that the coiner of the term "Manichaean paranoia" believed this to be true. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 09:10, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Second:

It split the world into good (or light) and evil (darkness), which are in constant conflict.

No, it didn't. The whole material world is evil according to Manichaeism. Only the souls trapped into matter was in any way un-evil, and might have been saved by searching for a certain knowledge. As much as I can guess, there wasn't in any way an ongoing conflict between good and evil in this world. So while possibly being an image of a hypothetical religion, it's relation to either Manichaeism or the malformed phrase "Manichaean paranoia" is at the very best unclear, and most probably dubious. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 09:24, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Third:

This intense dualism can lead to a moral polarization, where every position can take on either a morally good or morally evil cast, resulting in very little ground for neutrality.

The dualism as per Manichaeism has nothing of that kind. All visible is evil, STOP. I think this sentence tries to defend the oxymoron "Manichaean paranoia" by referring to quite different kinds of dualisms much more well known to us today, but that is jumping to conclusions, and this jumping to conclusions is not allowed acc2 WP:OR.

Fourth:

There is a distinct similarity between this dualism and the dualism implied by the contrast in Christian and Islamic doctrines between Satan, the original and personal manifestation of evil in the world, and the absolute, eternal goodness of God.

The phrase "distinct similarity" bugs me no end. I have a hard time accepting it, but it is a classical oxymoron who are used for rhetorical purposes. That is in disaccord with the language policies on Wikipedia. For the rest: what does the sentence mean? Do we now claim that the dualism is of the same kind as that of the arch-enemy to Manichaeism, namely Christianity? The sentence confuses more than the previous paragraphs are already confused because of the confusion in the underlying topic! (Is that a confused sentence, by the way?).

End of killing the logic. Next to come soon! ... said: Rursus (bork²) 11:27, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Arguments for destruction

After analysing this article, I have changed my reasons somewhat, on why the article is not notable, and why it can never come to be notable. We can repair the article to become readable, the phrase "Manichaean paranoia" might once have been a little bit notable (in March 2007), I'm willing to admit that. But for future it can never more become notable, because people will learn a little about Manichaeism, and sooner or later a religion scholar will rise up and dismiss the phrase as pure nonsense, as regards commonly known church history. The Bush regime is no more, so the phrase has no rhetorical value today, and it cannot be reused for its malformedness. The phrase evokes no more than approximately 300 hits on google today, most of which are either copies of Wikipedia, or references to this article on Wikipedia. This is extraordinarily little. This invented neologism didn't catch. After 22 months, it's usage is not widespread, considering the number of google hits.

Beside the lack of notability of the phrase – which is not a term, terms are defined neutrally for a professional purpose for a process in producing facts or products – the phrase tries to prove a point, i.e. that G.W. Bushes regime thought in a certain way, and therefore acting in a certain destructive way. If erected a socio-psychological term (lots of citations needed, including a precise definition) a similar term might once upon a time become justifiable on Wikipedia, but not a talk show rhetorical phrase! That is much too subjective and weak to be justifiable.

Now, I'm going to nominate the article for deletion. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 11:55, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

The result

My arguments held before the eyes of the intelligent and critical editors of wikipedia, 8 persons recommended a delete, 1 recommended a merge/redirect and Administrator MBisanz took the recommendations to delete it with no motivation, so we can assume that the editors said all necessary, 5 said WP:NEO, 5 said WP:N. The WP:N argument held, and it seems I succeeded to make it likely the phrase would have no chance of future notability. I'll study this text further later, to see how complicated the deletion process can be, and if there is some system solutions in order to make it less complicated.

Post cleanup

There certainly are bots doing this, but I think it was important: I removed all links from within Wikipedia Article space that linked to Manichaean paranoia.

Hermeneutic autocriticism

Now, I'm going to criticise my own criticism¹ (auto-), from an interpretation perspective (hermen ... whatever), in order to get a clearer view of the limitations of logics and language:

• the consideration that Brzezinski refd to the Christian Paranoia against Manichaeism was never treated except by hand-vawing, ²)
• the interpretations "Christian Paranoia against Manichaeism" or "Manichaean paranoia against everything", are interpretations I managed to couch up, are there more?
• I used the one contrafactual interpretation "Manichaean paranoia against everything", demonstrated it's contrafactualness and so "proved" that the political phrase cannot catch, let's (contrafactually) say that this was the one proving point the editors and admin used to decide it had no chance in universe to become notable ³) – if so, it might actually occur that none never would bother to debunk the oxymoronity of "Manichaean paranoia" (except rursus of course), and thus is my "'proof' flawed"⁴. That would of course be a fundamentally anti-Wikipedian attitude, so we have a cultural decision, not only a decision based on WP:Policies.
• It occurs to me that Brzezinski used the phrase to cast doubts on the genuity of George W. Bush'es religious zeal, as being overly black-and-white by comparing it to a fictious religion called "Manichaeism" having an "Augustinian" good-and-evil dichotomy⁵

¹) neither the decision, nor the deletion process, the article s*cked, mostly, and it had a limited life time by honestly trying to deal with a obfuscated purpose

²) Brzezinski never explained this, but that's not the point, let's speculate he did, but not in the talk show,

³) It occurs to me that the editors used WP:NEO as well, and a diverse anti-POV deliberations that makes the presence of a political buzz-phrase a little displaced in an encyclopedia,

⁴) just a simile – I never claimed to prove anything,

⁵) Augustine of Hippo, convert from true Manichaeism, is currently impopular amongst protestants, I think, having been accused of copying too much of his original religion into christianity. I think much of Augustine's thinking is not Manichaean, but don't know what consequences this have,

Analysis of database systems

(This text is a reflection on how I think, it's a limitation-of-natural-languages issue, and maybe I'm going to translate it into English later)

I would need a database system, but the articles on them don't provide orthogonal information. Let's say that A(t) is the article A on topic t in wikipedia. On the unlikely event that we compare articles of wikipedia WP and underpedia UP we use the elaborate notation A_WP(t) vs A_UP(t). Now A(t) has a coverage c(A(t)) which is a set of subtopics treated by the article A(t). In the case of databases a subtopic could be 1. implementation (algorithms, data structures etc.), 2. process architecture and process communication, 3. API etc.. If for all databases t_i coverage C is C = c(A(t_i)), then all articles on databases are perfectly orthogonal, which is not exactly desirable. We just need that there is a coverage set D, that is fairly big and contains all important DB issues, such that for all i it is valid that D ⊂ c(A(t_i)).

Propd criteria:

• relational/object oriented/object relational (is this a real criterion or is it one of the grand compsci errors ¹) ?
• implementation: algorithms, data structures,
• process architecture: threads/processes/global mem/caches/intercomm etc.
• deployment philosophies: how setup and access – dynamic vs. static alloc, deployer vs. deployee memmgmt, how provide args,
• db access language: no lang (just API:ing) vs. SQL dialect vs. other PL.

¹) such an error was deleting name parameters from Algol 60, then reinventing lazy eval, another is deleting Pascal sets, then reinventing bit arithmetics, in this case it would be: RelDB:s requires object oriented design, OODB:s require relational design.

Help text

Text that I wrote to a disruptive newbie, in order to explain how to oppose an allegedly factually incorrect text in a consensus-creative order. The text might be used for getting benevolent disruptors into line.

Your edits in // was not very good, sorry to say. Wikipedia is an international encyclopedia, and the text shall be neutral in tone according to a Wikipedia policy called Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. If you have one widespread opinion and there are other opposing widespread opinions, both opinions should be in the article, not only your. The article shall clearly write that those opinions are opinions.

You can always protest against opinions on the talk page of the article. If you oppose an individual sentence in the text that is already written, you have the opportunity to use the templates {{fact}} which inserts a little text ^{[citation needed]} that will be dealt with in time, or if you decide that the sentence is outrightly wrong, you could use, {{dubious}}, that inserts ^{[dubious – discuss]}. If the entire article is full of opinions that are dubious, you could opt to put the text {{POV}} (capital letters!), or in milder cases {{POV-check}}. Always try to explain your objections as much as possible on the talk page. If you feel that your opinion in the topic is an opinion shared by many adherents, then your improvements to the article should preferrably be to add your opinion beside the one that is written now. Always try to explain your standpoint on the talk page. Don't delete material without consulting the other editors on the talk page. The purpose of the talk page is to create a consensus on how all opinions are going to be balanced in order to get a neutral objective article that explains everything from all standing points.

Uuh

A good thing:

"The American Psychiatric Association is vigorously opposing any non-medical or legal definition of what purports to be a medical condition "without regard for scientific and clinical knowledge".W. Lawrence Fitch (2003). "Sexual Offender Commitment in the United States". Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 989:489-501 (2003). Retrieved 2007-12-16. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |month= (help)"

Possible instruction for companies writing articles about themselves

This is pure speculation and has nothing to do with policies, this is just about avoiding the article immediatelly being deleted as subencyclopedically inferior articles:

1. High Wikipedians have from time to another cursed some blatant company adverticement on Wikipedia, by natural leadership this attitude may infect other wikipedians, so be very careful to be neutral when producing an article about yourselves,
2. your company must be notable, f.ex. having patents on X unique innovations, having X employees, making X dollars money, having offices in more than X places, having more than X customers simultaneously, or otherwise having an unique expertice this and that, the wikipedia community dictatorially determines whether an article contains a notable topic, so if it is deleted, a most probable cause is that the company is not notable
3. there is no idea whatsoever to try to sue wikipedia, if slanderous false information occurs on wikipedia, it will be deleted as soon as you prove your point, and if necessary contact Wikimedia Foundation, wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a board for political or other opinions,
4. wikipedia contains neutral articles, no buzzwords, no salesman's phantastiquality, the article shall explain what the company does, what tech it uses/implements/sells, CEO and important owners, a few important monetary facts, if it owns patents or similar properties (even if dry and neutral, the article might serve as a kind of "advertizement", unless the company tries to censure or otherwise truth-pervert the article, in which case all hell will break loose!),
5. the wikipedia community loves links (but not too much)! Besides citation links, who are allowed to be as many as the text requires, the External links section shall contain a link to the home page and a limited list of links to the main technologies (or similar, such as important methodologies), links containing salesman's speech sucks heavily, the links shall provide clear and neutral information on technology, methodology and such things that the company provides, otherwise a critical editor will sooner or later find the link and delete it,
6. all information in the article shall be externably citable, including the monetary facts, patents etc., most remarkable info should be cited, trivial information, if such exists, need no links,
7. if the company faces lawsuits or other heavy criticism, this should be in the article, but a few citable company rebuttals and counterarguments are acceptable and recommendable, wikipedia does neither slander nor praise, so criticisms must be citable, and counterarguments are valid, so that the conflicts are neutrally related,
8. an article about the CEO is generally not acceptable, unless the person is notable, slanderous or libellous texts are not legio, the risk of producing article about person is as always the risk of attracting negative attention,
9. a company should never consider using money donations as a means to make their articles notable (that might indeed prove expensive!!), instead it is preferrable the company decides wikipedia is a good thing and generally helpful for their business, or for humankind in general,
10. for the rest, an article should be readable, the user should want to read the article, he/she should be able to fastly get an overview, the text shouldn't look terse and overfull of unnecessary details, and it should contain a coherent story, not infinite lists of products and services; wikipedia is generally not a place for long and hard-to-maintain lists, unless those lists follow a scientific or media related topic, such as list of star names,