User talk:Strataman

Stoney Middleton

I am new to contributing to Wikipedia. There are some evidential issues regarding the use of Jacobs Ladder and its representation in this article which can be contested on philosophical grounds. I confess to be at something of a loss on the Jacobs Ladder issue. I have walked this path for the last 35 years and visibly see it deteriorating, and it is justifiable to say, if we take Baconian empiricism to be valid as an epistemology that it has deteriorated. It is also justifiable as an inferential link, to attribute this to the movement of motorised wheeled traffic along this carriageway, this latter, I grant, is a belief which can also count as knowledge because 1) it is true, the carriagway is being degraded, 2) it is justified, it has experientially suffered a greater rate of degredation within the last 20 years, 3) it is the belief that this is caused by motorised traffic. I grant that there is no independent scientific survey, but in this instance one is not necessary because it is the observation of a primary witness, a primary source, someone who is there, infact the 504 people who, like me, live in Stoney Middleton, and therefore it does not need to be justified with recourse to a secondary source such as a news paper that reports what primary sources have said anyway. My second point on the nature of evidence is this. The Parish Council is an elected open and publicly accountable body, it is run by the village community on behalf of the village community to promote the village communities best interests. One can then, in the nature of representative democracy, assume that it has a mandate and that dissonance on any issues is raised at Parish Council meetings and duly minuted. If it lodges an appeal against the Highways agency or complains about Jacobs Ladder being used by motorised vehicles then I think one can be fairly certain that it is actually doing so on behalf of the village community. I fail to see where the problem is with that inferential link and further then extrapolate that the use of Jacobs Ladder by motorised vehicles is unpopular in the village? I agree, Wikipedia should not be a soapbox or a campaigning platform but I fail to see how stating "it can be driven" is any less neutral than saying "but driving on it is causing its degradation and is unpopular with the villages" both are statements of fact. In invoking neutrality it actually serves to encourage the partisan view, rationally and reasonably stating that the right to drive such a route is extant but that it is contested and unpopular with residents is a neutral statement that has contextual balance, which is, after all, what an encyclopedia does.Strataman (talk) 10:15, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

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