Talk:Hillsong Ukraine

Social work

Re diff: "occasional" is also a wrong word, because these are sustained efforts. Although, this is OR, of course. But "considerable efforts" is also not equal to something like "considerable results". The latter would be definitely non-NPOV. Still, I don't see how "considerable efforts" are non-NPOV. Latreia 17:47, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Simple: Efforts you find considerable others may not (especially having read the link you supplied). Anyway, hope this suits you fine. Garik 11 20:30, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Office

Garik 11, your persistent subjective description is not adequately backed with data. As above in "Social work", what you may find sumptuous, other would consider _adequate_ for the level of operations an organization is conducting.

The website does not provide a description of offices, so "offices' descriptions and locations in Kiev in the link are clearly summed up in "sumptuous"" clearly lacks basis. There is no description. The drawn picture on the page is a design element. It neither portrays the offices nor even the buildings where the offices are located. You could look at the site heading (the flash element) and decide that the shining bars are an aurora, and thus conclude that Hillsong Kyiv is located in a polar zone.

The first office was purchased at a time when realty prices in Kyiv were rather ridiculous. It's a 2-level apartment with 5 rooms (3 of them rather tiny), an entrance hall and a kitchen of about 8 sq. m. The office houses the Bible college, and 40-50 students were already not fitting in the meeting room last year. This year, it's 90 full-time students, and they would not fit in the old office. The new office is 400 sq. m large, and its location is not as central as the site says. The new office is on Dnipro's Left Bank, and the Left Bank is by definition not a central location.

Anyway, "sumptuous" is non-NPOV and subjective, as "considerable" above. It is even more non-NPOV than "considerable". Articles about Orthodox churches do not contain information on the amount of realty and land these churches own, although they have venues that are located much more centrally and have also been heavily invested in, without the comparable level of social work, and without someone describing it as "sumptuous".

Anyway, the offices are _adequate_ to the amount of work the church is doing, there are no descriptions that would say otherwise, so I will again delete your subjective epithet. I really hope this doesn't result in an edit war, since I don't have time for this, and I trust that you will be able to understand that what you might find sumptuous others may not. Latreia 11:07, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Wow... Seems you do have time for an edit war. Sorry, I don't. I am also sorry to hear that the Hillsong site is so misleading. Garik 11 11:28, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Maybe the problem is on the perception side. There was nothing there to warrant the "sumptuous" description. You were able to downsize the information on social work, you have also been able to exaggerate the information on the church's assets. I really don't have time to make a further semantical analysis of words and phrases, but I trust that you can be more objective. If you want to, of course. Latreia 11:53, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I really hate to get into this, but I also hate you labelling me as not objective. So here is the deal. My assumptions and conclusions are based solely on the supplied links. Calling "considerable and sustained efforts" giving away Easter cakes to orphans *is* subjective and just wrong (we all know that Easter happens once a year, and a cake would not last that long). But there is nothing subjective (or derogatory, as you probably think) in calling “sumptuous” the offices when I see a picture of a modern high-riser, when I read the address stating “one of the city’s central and fast developing districts” and when I know a thing or two about real estate prices in Kiev (go figure). Now, what you are saying is apparently *not* based on the supplied references, and therefore is your OR. I am not saying that you are wrong, but it is not my fault that the Hillsong Kiev site is apparently not a good source for a Wikipedia article about the church as *you* see it. Garik 11 12:43, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

> solely on the supplied links. Calling "considerable and sustained efforts"

> giving away Easter cakes to orphans *is* subjective and just wrong

Have you made the effort to go through the whole menu of the section, or have you read the first 2 paragraphs about Easter gifts and call this "based solely on the supplied links"? Would it be nice style, just layout-wise, to list up in the article links to all the sub-pages of the sections for the benefit of eventual visitors who have such a narrow attention span that they are not able of spotting a sub-menu and browsing through it? Of seeing, for example, the mobile food subsection which tells about a weekly service to homeless children? Other sub-sections? Do I need to list them all here to make my point?

This is what I call a perception problem. Even what is on the website (and not everything is there, b/c updating the site is also a piece of work, and the office staff is not always up to maintaining PR at the cost of real work) gives enough grounds not to call this work "occasional". But one has to open one's eyes and browse through the menu.

Re the drawn pictures of the skyscraper and stuff, I could even say that there are other pieces of nonsense on the website (there is, for example, a mis-formulated legal description which is there due to the insufficient legal knowledge of the person/s maintaining the site), the update rate of the site is lacking, and if it were me sitting there and doing the website I probably would have done this differently.

Anyway, I'm sorry if what I've said made the impression that I was accusing you of deliberately mis-representing something. But the page about the offices really doesn't contain descriptions of offices. The drawing is a bummer (I just guess that the leadership thinks that letting down and reining in creative kids who help on the website is worse than eventual mis-representation), but there are no obvious reasons to conclude that the offices _comprise_ these whole buildings. This is a conjecture that you have made. "One of the central districts" is probably also a bummer. Though, Livoberezhna is neither Troeshchina nor Borshchagivka, so it's not exactly outskirts.

Re realty prices that you have some idea about, you probably should also understand that constantly renting a suitable hall for the uninterrupted Bible college classes would have been much more sumptuous squandering of contributed money, but not as visible as something that is _owned_. Is it fair to point a finger at that? Operations need to be conducted in this city, so we have to work with everything that is the economical environment in this city.

Re OR, I knew about the new office when I started this article already (it had actually been purchased at the end of 2006 or first months of 2007), but the information wasn't on the site, so I decided to forgo it until the staff finds the time to update the site. Admittedly, they did it in a slightly over-creative manner. But one needs a small bit of attention and ability to process information. There was, again, no description of offices on the page; an assumption that any picture of a building means the office fills it all is a conjecture; and one should be able to analyze language to understand that "one of the central" is not "THE central", although it admittedly is a stupid phrase. And, anyway, "sumptuous" or "adequate" are all in relations to what the offices are used for. And if one looks at a submenu and only reads the first two paragraphs about Easter cakes, then of course having two offices for that is sumptuous, but if one gives oneself the effort to read about other social work, sees the sections of Bible college and conferences and thinks that the former must take place somewhere, and the latter needs much work to be prepared for, one would be really hard-pressed to call it "sumptuous".

Although I don't work for the church, I apologize on behalf of the whole congregation for the website not providing the full real-life 3D experience of what Hillsong Church is and does.

Peace :) Latreia 13:38, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

• OK, apologies accepted. :) Garik 11 14:54, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Criticism

I believe this section needs rewriting and/or adding references. It seems very OR-ish. At least some shortening would be good. Garik 11 10:28, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, finding sources for criticism of exactly Hillsong Kiev, as opposed to Hillsong in Australia, would be difficult. We're not generating much ado, at least for now, and at least in the negative sense, so I added criticism just from words of people I talked to who think Hillsong is too "prosperity-ish". So, it basically is OR. But when I created the article, I thought not including anything from the criticism side would be non-NPOV, so that's why it's there. :) I really know of no published sources for criticism of Hillsong Kiev as such. :) We have another scapegoat among neo-Protestant churches in Kiev, so all attention goes to them :). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Latreia (talk • contribs) 18:12, 11 October 2007 (UTC)