User talk:SocJan

I will usually reply on this page to messages posted here.
I usually watchlist talk pages that I post on — if I have posted on your talk page feel free to reply there.

molestation categories

I couldn't agree more that it is inappropriate to list books, movies, etc, under the "fictional victims of molestation" category, and I have in fact corrected many such mistakes. Treybien 14:27 7 August 2007

Laurence Scott

If you want to try and keep this article, please follow the proper procedures. It has been through AFD already, so deleting the tag is not appropriate. Betaeleven 00:21, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

What ARE "the proper procedures" at this point? Once you policemen win a speedy delete argument, IS there ANY procedure that ANYONE can follow to create a Laurence H. Scott page, assuming evidence has been found that would satisfy you of his Wikipedia worthiness? If so, please let me know what it is.

It appears to me (and, from their talk pages, to others whose work you have deleted) that by killing an entry via Speedy Delete you make it very difficult for anyone ever to attempt to create a new (and we would hope better) one in the future.

Are we missing something? Please point me to "proper procedures" for creating an entry when a previous entry of the same name has been Speedy Deleted.--SocJan 01:01, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Please read my comments at the bottom of this page. Some pages are speedily deleted because they are manifest nonsense, copyright violations, etc.; recreating such an article in its former form should be impossible.

Perfectly reasonable. No argument, there. Total agreement from me.--SocJan 02:51, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

This one was repeatedly speedily deleted for a procedural reason: Nicol kept recreating essentially the same article that had already been deleted as the result of an AfD discussion. Doing so is grounds for a speedy delete. Deor 01:22, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Precisely my point: Speedy Delete ought not be a way to deal with an edit war. Deal with the editor; don't punish everyone who might want to defend the page. My question to policeman Betaeleven was whether NICOL's behavior was grounds for Betaeleven's telling ME that MY deleting of the tag was inappropriate. As I explain below, I deleted the tag after reading it carefully and believing it was inviting me to delete it. Someone later incorrectly assumed that I was working with Nicol. I was not. I was completely unaware of the struggle that had been going on. Although I happen to know Nicol (indeed, I had called Laurence to his attention) IMAGINE, please, that I was someone who just happens across the Scott entry and sees the tag. (This is not far from the truth.) In good faith, I try to add to the page, only to have my additions disappear and to get chided on my talk page for somehow having behaved inappropriately. I still don't see how I could have known that I was doing anything wrong in removing the tag and working on the entry.

Perhaps someone should re-word the "tagged for speedy delete" box (I quote it below and explain why I thought I was following its instructions). And perhaps policemen ought to be careful not to make unwarranted assumptions and start shooting at bystanders.--SocJan 02:51, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Because of my interest in Guy Davenport, I have known about and admired the work of Laurence Scott for some time but just recently made contact with people who know much more about him. I noticed that someone was kind enough to initiate a Laurence Scott entry, so I have begun to contribute to that entry with facts and references. I had no idea that people could sweep all our work away without saying a word about why.

Betaeleven: I have indeed checked the delection log, and have followed links to pages on criteria for deletion, which I have read. But I remain confused. The following language seemed to invite me to delete the "tagged for speedy deletion" notice:

If this page does not meet the criteria for speedy deletion, or you intend to fix it, please remove this notice, but do not remove this notice from pages that you have created yourself.

Well, I DO intend to fix it, and I DID NOT create it, so I responded to the invitation "please remove this notice".

What did I do wrong?

I readily confess my novice status with regard to Wikipedia standards and procedures on such matters as deletion of a recent entry while people are still trying to improve it. Tell me where I can learn more. I am sure everyone else knows what "be[ing] through AFD" means; I plead ignorance.

Shouldn't those rushing to delete this page give SOME reason why they want it deleted? I've read the Wikipedia rules and they seem to suggest that a decent time should be allowed for new pages to reach a point at which they might intelligently be judged . . . SocJan 04:51, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

What did you do wrong? Well, nothing you could do could negate the rationale for the speedy delete—that the article had been deleted via AfD and was repeatedly being recreated in defiance of that—so there was no justification for your removing the tag.

Where, in the criteria for speedy deletion, do I find that defiance by one editor of an entry is justification for preventing other editors from commiting to bring the page up to standards? Perhaps the language in the "tagged for speedy deletion" box (see above) should be altered to warn innocent visitors that they should read some log before removing the box. A link to the speedy delete discussion would be helpful. Had I seen something like that (was it there and I missed it?), I would not have responded to "please remove this notice" as I did. -- SocJan 03:01, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

If you and Nicol are going to operate as a tag team, you really should come up with a good WWE-style name for yourselves. Deor 15:20, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I apologize if you found the remark above offensive, but Nicol has claimed on a couple of occasions that edits he has made to Guy Davenport were actually edits he was making on your behalf, or edits he has privately solicited your agreement on. The Wikipedia editing process is intended to be more or less transparent to all visitors, and if you wish to make edits or comments, it would be best if you made them under your own name. Deor 00:43, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

You are still lecturing me while making unwarranted assumptions. Every contribution I have made to the Davenport entry has been (at least originally) made under my own name. The process HAS been transparent -- but only to patient readers willing carefully to compare many edits. When anyone (not just Nicol) restores something he himself has cut, especially if other edits occur in the meantime, the original source of the material is often not clear until one reviews many previous versions.

What Nicol did that could be said to be "on [my] behalf" has been to RESTORE material of mine, previously uploaded under my name, that he had deleted. He was simply trying to say to you that sometimes these restorations might have appeared to be new material from Nicol himself because of the length of time between his deletion and his undeletion. The question of "credit" for a particular fact or organizational change never bothered me. If my work appeared to be coming from Nicol, whereas in fact it was actually a contribution of mine that Nicol had deleted and was now, sometime later, restoring, then so what? If it made the entry better, I was happy. Instead of getting into edit wars, as he and you did, I chose to get other Davenport experts to join in an email debate -- based on demonstrable fact, backed by sources -- until all of us could agree on Nicol's version or my version or some version that had gotten better as we debated how something might be misread or how something could be sharpened.

Are you seriously suggesting that THAT is bad? That people who debate a fact via email must air all their discussions here on Wikipedia talk pages?!! Given the level of incivility that I see here, including your treatment of me here, I would certainly never agree to that. When some of us reach email consensus on, say, a verifiable fact (such as Davenport's age upon entering Duke -- which was far more elusive than you might believe), anyone else is free to challenge that fact at any time if he or she thinks we got it wrong. Who cares how many emails it took knowledgeable parties, all of whom respect each other despite our warts and quirks, to answer the question so long as each posted fact is properly supported by respectable published references? Are you actually demanding to read everyone else's emails on every detail????

Nor is it proper for you to assume that anyone else speaks for me. Nicol wrote to you after you used as evidence (in your argument that he has appeared to you to act as if he "owns" the page) deletions he had recently made of some of my contributions to the page. His choice of language in attempting to rebut that charge would not have been mine, and you misunderstood. I was silent during that exchange. My silence gave consent neither to his language nor to your inferences. But you attacked me when I aired quite another matter here.

From here on out, please leave me completely out of your wars with Nicol. I have joined no coalition of the willing, not with you, not with him. My only interest is in making Wikipedia pages better. What you guys are doing isn't that.--SocJan 06:20, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

The remark above [now crossed out; thanks, I guess.--SocJan 23:56, 26 March 2007 (UTC)] is uncalled for and its implication false.

I first visited the Scott page yesterday. When I saw it, I believed that I could strengthen it. Seeing the tag, I felt a sense of urgency. So I began work on the entry, despite having other things to do.

Nicol and I are NOT a tag team. I had nothing to do with his repeated "defiance" of AfD (which I still don't understand; bad me. Obviously Wikipedia is not for everyone, after all, only for people willing to master heaps and gobs of bureaucratic rules and acronyms? I thought we were just supposed to do our best to locate and properly support our facts).

I still fail to grasp how the rules covering "speedy deletion" justified removing the Scott page so quickly (wasn't it quite new?). I ask again: how in hell can anything be added to Wikipedia if some of you instantly smash anything that doesn't burst forth filled with abundant evidence of "significance"? Give new pages a chance, for crying out loud! I've read the published criteria for speedy deletion and I can't see how even Nicol's first short posting was a candidate for speedy deletion. It was obviously not frivolous; it was obviously not posted by Scott himself. He was obviously more than just another academic.

I removed the tag because, as I have explained above, the tag's wording seemed to invite me (someone who did not create the page) to remove it if I believed I had met -- or intended to meet in the near future-- what appeared to be the reason(s) for speedy deletion. You still don't explain just how my reading of the tag was wrong; you focus instead on what Nicol had done previously. My point is that in punishing Nicol you also "punished" me -- and everybody who might be interested in Laurence Scott.

Please imagine for an instant how I felt yesterday, having devoted significant effort to beefing up the Scott page, when suddenly all my work was gone -- because some policeman DELETED not only Nicol's work but mine, too!! The page had gone to a place where apparently only a few of you can see it, and any of you who bothered to do so might NOT see the new material I added, material I thought arguably met the test of significance that Nicol's original apparently did not meet. VERY frustrating!

I believe that Nicol's interest in Scott is identical to mine: having learned more about him in the course of adding to the Guy Davenport entry, Nicol believes (and I agree) that Scott deserves his own entry. He published significant modern poetry. That's not chopped liver.

I guess I have learned to save to my own hard drive anything that I am trying to add to a Wikipedia piece. I had thought that one of the wonderful features of Wikipedia was that it kept forever all previous versions of a page -- but not if special people with lightning-fast red pencils can delete pages at will. I'm learning, and I'm not finding myself enjoying the process. Again: why accuse me of some sort of collusion? It doesn't happen to be true. Help me understand how this page needs justification and I will do my best to play by the rules of the playground you apparently police.SocJan 09:32, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi SocJan. I guess I should start by saying that I understand that you and Nicol are not in cahoots. Also, although I've edited other pages on Wikipedia, this Davenport stuff is the first time I've had to learn about any of this bureaucratic/acronymic stuff. Anyway, I saw your plea for the Scott article on the deletion page. I voted in favor of deletion and wanted to explain why. What I know about Scott is only what you and Nicol have told me. He's connected to Davenport and Pound; he translated an important book; he co-published another. That makes him "notable" in some sense, certainly, but does it make him "notable" in the Wikipedia sense as defined at WP:BIO? While I can see that this is something reasonable people might disagree over, I simply don't think he qualifies from what I've seen so far. The one sentence from WP:BIO I would pick to explain this is "incidental coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not sufficient to establish notability." (I haven't seen the Crane book, but does it really contain non-incidental material focused on Scott as a figure in his own right, as opposed to a focus on the works he published?)

CRANE, 96, (about CANTO CX): "This was the only book printed under the "As Sextant Press" imprint, which Scott and GD created for the purpose. GD edited the poem, Scott made the frontispiece portrait drawing, and together they printed the book. According to GD, Pound had given this and several other late cantos to Donald Hall with the injunction to 'touch them up and print 'em'. Scott was permitted to make a copy of the Canto CX ms. in Hall's possession for this printing [. . . ] The New Directions DRAFTS & FRAGMENTS OF CANTOS CX-CXVII (New York, 1968) has an entirely re-edited version considerably variant from the Sextant text [that is] also used in [all] succeeding editions."

As I read this, without Scott's initiative it is unlikely that this Davenport-edited version of Canto CX would exist.

CRANE, 95-6, describes the broadside "Ezra's Bowmen of Shu", created by Scott and Davenport a few months before CANTO CX.

Davenport's account of his work with Scott is mentioned in recently published Davenport letters to Jonathan Williams (see Guy Davenport page). It seems clear that Scott had the press, an interest in Pound, and (later) an interest in publishing Davenport's poetry ("Cydonia Florentia"); Davenport brought to their joint ventures the scholarship and his personal knowledge of Pound. Working with Scott in 1965 appears to have re-inforced Davenport's earlier interest in typography, design, and printing, pursued at Duke with Clare Leighton but already an interest in his childhood. Scott is the first of several distinguished small press publishers with whom Davenport collaborated, but the only one he joined in the pressroom. SocJan 09:00, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I certainly wouldn't call Scott "just another academic", and it's shame that some have made rude remarks like "if Scott deserves a page, then anyone deserves a page", which is rubbish. I'm sorry I couldn't come down on your side on this one — at least from what I've seen so far. I hope you won't get so fed up about this that you decide to stop contributing to Wikipedia.--SethTisue 16:23, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Amen to that. I'll support anything in the academic world potentially supportable, but I can only do this if I stay reasonable about it. I wouldn't try on the basis of publishing impt. literary works or fine printing without several dozen items of importance published. Unless someone writes and publishes an article about him, there really isn't much of a chance the way people currently feel about relatively minor academics without conventional signs of prestige, and I doubt that anything will change about that. Unfortunately the campaign against true spam is so urgent that it does make publishing stubs a risky thing. It's urgent because if someone goes to WP and sees any of the thousand or so true junk a day, it really turns off serious users. It affects our credibility so drastically that I fully support the process even as I try to rescue worthy articles from under the wheels. If you dont have a copy of what you wrote, let me know. DGG 00:10, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, DGG and SethTisue, for your patience and for not dismissing my cries of dismay with terse scolding. Let's see if I understand. Because spam is a desperate Wikipedia problem, those of us who come across a weak new entry that we think we might be able to strengthen should understand that we better not try -- unless we are willing to drop everything else and race against some (undefined) clock.

For months I had been trying to learn more about Scott. When I saw the Wikipedia page, I thought I could strengthen it. If I had known that the page was due to die in an hour or two (while I was at work on it) and go to some place where I couldn't even visit it without begging permission of My Betters, I would not have attempted to improve it. I suppose the additional information I was trying to add might not have been enough to convince you of Scott's importance, anyway. But other readers after me might know of additional credible sources of information. They won't be able to add their contributions, of course, if there is no Wikipedia article.

'Seems a Catch 22 to me, or at least quite contrary to my conception of the Wiki idea: In effect, you are saying, unless the first person to create an entry already knows enough about an elusive character to meet your tests of significance, no entry can be allowed. If no entry is allowed, how can anyone else bring new facts to strengthen it? Moreover, do I understand correctly that once you kill an entry of this sort, anyone who attempts to write about that person in the future will be blocked from doing so because its subject has already been judged unimportant? (If so, it appears that anyone can send a person to Wikipedia Hell by purposely writing a bad initial article on him. I need to get someone to write an entry about me right away!)

I thought it was a central insight of Wikipedia that knowledge is distributed, that together we can know more than any one of us can know. Aren't these speedy deletions dooming sparcely-documented but important people to the exact obscurity that Wikipedia was supposed to shine light into (among other Wikipedia goals)? I happen to think that the Guy Davenport entry is a fine example of what Wikipedia can do. That entry (assuming that someone hasn't trashed it again in the last 30 minutes) may be the world's best source of accurate information about a remarkable person who very carefully lived an intensely private life, and whose work can best be understood as a whole, the writing and criticism and drawing and painting all being manifestations of the same unified and remarkable vision.

Scott was, among other things, a small press publisher of significant poets in well-designed limited editions. How many such publications, if I can list them, will it take for one of you to defend an entry for him just on the basis of his work as publisher? Frankly, I am discouraged by the rush to delete an entry that I think could have been useful to people like me who come across some of Scott's work and want to know more about him and his other work. Perhaps someday I will do that thing that someone above thinks terrible (because it is outside Wikipedia and thus not "transparent") -- which is to locate others who know about Scott and work with them away from Wikipedia until we have an initial entry that won't be strangled in its cradle.

Could that even succeed? Please tell me how, if we believe we have a good entry, we can get you actually to read it and not summarily reject it on the grounds that "Laurence Scott has already had his Judgment Day and is consigned for all eternity to Wikipedia Insignificance Limbo". -- SocJan 07:35, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

First of all, let me say that I have no desire to be a Wikipedia policeman—I'd much rather work at improving articles than at fighting vandalism, commenting on AfDs, etc. But many editors have to do their part in dealing with such matters, or WP would quickly degenerate into a mess of juvenile nonsense and miscellaneous gibberish. (Have you ever clicked on the "Recent changes" link at the left of any page and looked at what many, many WP edits consist of?) It wasn't I who nominated Laurence Scott for deletion—I probably whouldn't have known about the article if someone other than Nicol had created it—but once it was nominated, I, like any other WP user, was entitled to give my honest recommendation, based on the requirements for a valid WP article.

To answer the questions in your last paragraph: Yes, of course you can create a new article on Scott if you can produce one that satisfies the requirements, such as WP:BIO. I recommend that you read the page WP:GD carefully, particularly the section titled "If you disagree with the consensus." You may run into one problem: Because Nicol reacted to the AfD decision by repeatedly recreating the page instead of following the correct procedure, it's possible that (if the deletion stands after review) the article may be protected against recreation. If this happens, you'll have to get an administrator to unprotect it before you can create a new article with the title "Laurence Scott." The procedure for doing so is explained at WP:RFP.

Before you create a new article, however, be very sure that it meets the requirements for inclusion, or it will be déjà vu all over again. One way you can do this is to create the article in your User space and invite experienced Wikipedians (among whom I don't count myself) to review it and give you their opinion. Deor 00:53, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

This is quite clear -- and helpful.

But please ponder: IS IT appropriate to resolve an edit war by putting a topic in the protected against recreation category?

If the topic is not obviously a candidate for such treatment, future Wikipedia contributors or users are going to be baffled. As someone recently said in another context, should we have to follow a potentially long trail to a talk page like this one to understand why we are blocked from seeing or creating an entry that we thought Wikipedia would want to include? Nothing about Scott justifies "protection against recreation"; the only thing that MIGHT justify such a measure is (apparently) the procedural battle(s) involving Nicol--of which a newcomer cannot be expected to know.

Would you please take steps to insure that "Laurence H. Scott" is NOT "protected against recreation"? Just last night I found someone else who knew Scott and has pointed me toward significant pieces that he published. Unless you or someone else will protect against protection against recreation (I can't believe I typed that!), a person with no previous knowledge of this struggle who believes Scott worthy of an entry will be even worse off than I was prior to your explanation above. He won't have a clue why there is an apparently eternal block of his topic, nor, without immersing himself in Wikipedia bureaucracy without a guide, will be know how to appeal this puzzling situation!

In the meantime, thank you again for the swift, thoughtful, helpful, and reasonable note above.--SocJan 02:24, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

SocJan, your answer is right here from Deor. First of all, I didn't delete any article. I don't have the power to do that. I merely submit certain articles for deletion; only an admin can delete it. Nicol ruined every chance given to him to have a decent article created about Laurence Scott. He never once took the time to read any of the requirements for nobility, yet he managed to re-create the same bad article each time.

You have to understand my perspective. I saw the original article. It was crap. I submitted it for speedy delete. It got denied. I submitted it for AFD. It was deleted. James whined and complained, but never fixed it. He re-created the same crappy article three more times. How would you expect me to respond? I followed the proper steps only to have it bypassed by someone who wouldn't take the time to make his beloved article better?

I'm sorry that you got caught up in this. You were trying to do the right thing, but Nicol took it as a personal attack against him and Laurence Scott and was too bullheaded and stubborn to do accept anything else (a trait I see he displays on the Davenport article, too).

Yes, as you pointed out, other users have complained to me on my talk page about my submission of their articles for deletion, but they were either spam (very common), blatant attacks, vandalism, or of non-notable people. Take a look at the Special:newpages or the Wikipedia:Articles for deletion pages sometime and see the crap that gets submitted to see what I'm talking about. A lot of people ge

I'm not saying that Laurence Scott isn't notable himself, however the article that James kept on re-creating didn't prove otherwise. If you create an article that meets the nobility requirements about Laurence Scott, then more power to you. I won't stop you, because I don't think it will be necessary. Judging from this experience, I doubt you'd submit anything that isn't worthy of it's own article. I don't envy the future revert wars you'll have with Nicol, though.

Good luck. Betaeleven 02:37, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Nicol put enormous energy into the Davenport page early on. His work and Sparrowseed's was so good that I was inspired to start contributing. Nicol is strongly opinionated, temperamental, hasty -- and often right. Until you came along, I got along with him just fine. We did it via email, as I have described here somewhere.

I have no quarrel with policemen who truly "preserve and protect". I do have trouble with officious policemen.

I don't think the Laurence Scott entry Nicol posted was "crap". It certainly needed work. Pointing to the Wikipedia rules of significance that it should pass was certainly a worthwhile intervention.

What's still baffling to me is the SPEED with which you all pounced on it. It was NOT spam; it was NOT copyright violating. I would have thought we'd have a month, say, to get it up to snuff.

You have now made your position very clear: no stubs that don't meet minimum standards upon first posting. I don't think that that is a good rule, but It's always nice to know what the local police will allow. I now know that if I'm quietly pondering life on a street corner, ready to talk but waiting for people interested in my topic, I can expect to be hauled in and fined for "loitering".

My judgment? You're overdoing it. Concentrate on the real criminals, please.

As for a Laurence H. Scott entry, I may get around to it. But you've certainly taken a lot of the fun out of Wikipedia for me. Was it worth it?

I do thank you for explaining yourself. Further affiant sayeth not.-- SocJan 03:21, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

You sure do like to make a lot of assumptions about me, don't you? Although, you don't want any further explanation, I feel like I should, anyway, because you don't seem to understand what I'm saying, or perhaps you do, and you still don't agree.

I apologize that I caused an rift between you and Nicol. I don't see how I'm the cause, but if that's what you believe by your implication, fine.

If you want to label me as an officious policeman, so be it. That's the entire purpose of having the Special:newpages available and the speedy delete tags (did you read all the categories and purposes of those? I bet you didn't). Once again, I invite you to take a look at those pages for a few hours and see why it's necessary. Many articles like the original Scott article get deleted immediately. However, I want to make it clear once again, I do not have the ability to delete an article. Take it up with the admins who agreed with the deletion nomination and actually did the deleting. Many users and many admins "patrol" these pages throughout the day to make sure quality articles are on Wikipedia. Just because one person thinks their article deserves to be here, doesn't mean that it does. In this case, every single instance of the Laurence Scott article deserved to be deleted. How can you dispute this?

I don't believe that you saw the original version of his article. Perhaps you did, but I believe if you had, you would have seen the AFD notice that was on there for five days with a link to the discussion regarding it's deletion, and even that was a modified version (I believe he added some wiki-links, a single reference, and some other facts). How is that pouncing on my part? It didn't get deleted right away. I went through the proper channels to have it reviewed. If it didn't get deleted, I would have acknowledged my mistake, and I would have moved on. But, the fact that it did get reviewed, and deleted, and then re-created three more times, of course, I'm going to "pounce" on the article to nominate it for deletion. And, each time I did that, the speedy delete tag was up for almost a day (or more) before it got deleted.

Did either you or Nicol put a {{hangon}} tag on there like you could have? Or did either one of you contest the deletion like you could of? No, you didn't do this until the fourth incarnation (almost two weeks later). So, don't try to tell me this sob story that it disappeared immediately each time. I believe most people upon realizing their article didn't meet standards, would take the time to find out what was wrong with the article and fix it, rather than re-creating almost the exact same thing.

If Nicol had been half-way intelligent about it, he would have got it "up to snuff" before he tried creating the same article like Deor has suggested to you once you decide to make it. That's the way Wikipedia works. Don't take it out on me for the way the rules are set. First time he created it and it got deleted, okay, no big deal. He didn't know any better. After that, you might want to try and learn the rules before getting all pissy about having an article deleted only to continue to ignore the rules and submit the same mistake(s) again.

If you think that this makes me a bad guy and if it makes you feel better to blame me for all of her current distaste for Wikipedia, I'm okay with that. We're each trying to make this site better, but in obviously different ways. Just don't accuse me of things or make assumptions without knowing what the hell you're talking about. You obviously haven't tried to understand my point of view in this at all. Betaeleven 01:50, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

EDIT: It's not hard to create an article (or even a three sentence stub) that establishes notability right off the bat. However, you can't expect to create either and then say, "I promise I'll fix it up in a month." Show notability first, then add and refine later. Why is that asking so much? Betaeleven 02:50, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

"Show notability first, then add and refine later" seems like a wise policy to me. SocJan, as frustrated as you are about this Laurence Scott situation, think how much worse it would be if you and others had put a greal deal of work into the article over a period of weeks or months, only to have the article end up deleted when fellow Wikipedians decided Scott didn't qualify for Wikipedia after all. It seems like a good system to me for notability to be the first hurdle.--SethTisue 03:49, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Re Davenport collections

I agree with you, but before taking an editorial chainsaw to the merged matter, I think we should wait until the articles from which it came go away. I've placed prod tags on Apples and Pears and A Table of Green Fields (I see that someone has changed The Cardiff Team to a redirect), and once they're deleted, editors can begin to decide what to do with the stuff in Guy Davenport. I could see adding to the "Writing" section a sentence or so on each of the most important stories. I could also see eliminating all of the discursive material and just appending lists of the stories in the collections—including the ones for which separate articles weren't created—to the entries in the "Fiction" list. Deor 13:38, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I forgot to say that I think a (sourced) mention of the fact that some critics have boggled at D.'s treatment of childhood sexuality could probably be added to the "Writing" section. It's true, and including it in the article might forestall further POV additions from the pedophilia crowd. Deor 13:45, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

That sounds completely reasonable; you'll get no argument from me. SocJan 00:19, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

SocJan, I'm traveling and haven't had time to put my two cents in on the latest Davenport edits, but I'm glad that you and others seem to have it under control. Thank you. I do want to say (and will probably say on the Davenport talk page before too much longer) that in my opinion, the article as it has now long stood underplays the presence of sexuality in general and child and adolescent sexuality in particular in Davenport's work. I don't agree with Tony's approach at all, but still, in the long run, I hope we can all find some balanced, objective, and mutually agreeable way for the article to accommodate more material on the topic. (It seems absurd to me, for example, that Erik Anderson-Reece managed to write an entire book about Davenport's visual art and barely even mention, let alone substantively address, all the boys in the pictures...!) SethTisue 15:30, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Again, this sounds reasonable. I won't object to anything that is accurate and balanced. You may want to look at Andre Furlani's recent book, the first major monograph in English on Davenport, published last summer: GUY DAVENPORT: Postmodern and after (Northwestern University Press, ISBN #978-0-8101-2385-4). Furlani addresses in considerable depth the child sexuality in Davenport's fictions. SocJan 00:19, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Agree with Deor. I can see the logic in merging the articles but the problem with OR still is still relevant regardless of which article it appears in. There is no ambiguity in wikipedia guidelines over the fact that unsourced material can be deleted. If it is clearly OR and therefore no chance of a citation then it can and must be deleted. Personally, if Tony Sandel continues to add OR then, i think it needs to go on the admin incident board. --Neon white 16:40, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Having had repeatedly to make the same arguments about Wikipedia rules to apparently deaf ears, I wouldn't stop you! SocJan 00:19, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Pedophilia and child sexual abuse in fiction (boys)

SocJan: Until someone with more authority than I steps up to nominate the article for deletion, I have proposed on the discussion page that all plot summaries not referenced by third party sources be deleted. Do you have any thoughts? Thanks, Strichmann 08:53, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Having given this some thought for a few days, I have decided that I favor a more selective approach: I think it is fair to challenge any OR summary that strikes one as POV and then delete it if, in a reasonable amount of time, no defense of the summary (in the form of a properly referenced secondary source) is forthcoming. Deleting all unreferenced summaries seems a bit too sweeping, but deleting summaries that any editor feels are clearly POV or otherwise inadequate seems completely reasonable. SocJan 10:13, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if I understand the concept of a plot summary being "unreferenced". Isn't the original work the reference for the summary...? It seems to me like there would need to be some actual problem with the summary (such as POV issues) to merit deletion. SethTisue 14:21, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. That's the central point: what do we do when we come across a plot summary that seems highly non-neutral?

If a plot summary seems neutral and fair and balanced, there is no reason to tag it. Ideally, everything in Wikipedia should be sourced, but the need is clearly more urgent when material is controversial. When knowledgable readers tag anything in Wikipedia as in violation of POV, it must be made neutral or be replaced with something referenced (and balanced).

One of the defenders of Tony's plot summaries referred us all to a Wikipedia page on how to write entries about fiction. I went there and read it. What I took away from that reading is that of course any text being discussed is its own best primary reference, but plot summaries must not include material not found in the work (such as characterizations of actions or people that are not characterizations found in the work: if a woman is not called a "hag" in a story, the summary should not call her a hag -- even if the author of the summary believes the book's description of her fits to perfection the dictionary definition of "hag"), and must not selectively stress material of one sort while neglecting material of a different sort. The problems I have been identifying are of both sorts: selectivity, and labeling of material in the plot in ways that the plot itself never labels that material, which amounts to making a judgment about that material rather than simply presenting it.

So when we come across a plot summary in a Wikipedia article that seems so riddled with authorial judgments and POV selectivity that it cannot be said to be neutral, we should demand that it be supported, at minimum, by reference to some published plot summary or critical discussion that reaches those judgments or examines those elements of the book -- and, moreover, that we be told of opposing views and given other information about how widely a particular critical opinion is held. An OR plot summary that violates POV should be fixed or replaced by published summary or commentary -- moreover, plot summaries and critical comment that are representative of the consensus on that fiction, if there is one, or of opposing views in proportion to their weight in the secondary literature.

If not fixed or successfully defended on the associated Talk page in a reasonable amount of time, an OR plot summary that has been challenged for POV violation should be deleted. That's my position. SocJan 20:01, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

This is how I put it to Tony Sandel on his Talk page:

"Neon white" is correct in asserting that Wikipedia does not allow editors to write original summaries of fictions, and to put fictions into categories, unless those summaries and categories are beyond dispute. Again and again you say, in effect, "It's obvious; the works clearly have this content and the work can be categorized as I say".

When content and category ARE obvious and undisputed, you should be able to find support -- in Library of Congress subject headings, for example. But you insist on including works that the LOC does not categorize as you do, and providing summaries that are far from indisputably neutral. In such cases, you are unquestionably doing ORIGINAL RESEARCH. Perhaps you are just ahead of your time, and the Library of Congress and others will eventually catch up to you.

In the meantime, Wikipedia NOR and NPOV guidelines absolutely forbid editors from proceding as you want to do, claiming that your plot summaries and categorizations are jusified by the texts themselves. Your readings of texts are your readings; it is not obvious that all readers will agree with you.

A book published in 1952 and set in England can usually be categorized in Wikipedia as published in 1952 and set in England, without reference to any source beyond the book itself -- because these sorts of fact are only rarely disputed.

But for a Wikipedia editor to assert, say, that a particular novel has a "theme" of "animal abuse", pointing to a passage in which a man kicks a dog, will not do. First, such a categorization would be original research. Second, if no scholarly article or other published commentary on that book calls special attention to "abuse of animals" in any plot summary or discussion of the book, for an editor to assert in a Wikipedia article that "animal abuse" is a "theme" of the book would be to adopt a non-neutral point of view.

What about this is still not clear? SocJan 01:07, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Tony has not responded to this comment. SocJan 20:12, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Discussion started about pedophilia list article

Please read the message I've left on the article's talk page about a related dispute here. Your input would be greatly appreciated. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 19:00, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Rewrite in sandbox

Yes, this is a good start.The Relativist (talk) 06:34, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Nicolson

Sorry about that. Looking at the code, it seems that I put Fritz Klein's name in there, so I don't think putting it on that page was intentional. I've never thought Nigel was bisexual either :S I have no idea how or why I put that in Andral (talk) 19:17, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Pedophilia and child sexual abuse in fiction (boys)

Use the 'move' button at the top to change the title of an article. Also use the what links here in the toolbox to update links to the page once it has been moved. --neonwhite user page talk 18:09, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Neon white: I wonder if perhaps you should undo your redirect of List of Books Featuring Pedophilia? I think participants in the discussion at the original page should see Tony's end-run for themselves before anything is done about it. I am puzzled that Will Beback (see bottom of this page) seems to support what I would have thought was a very un-Wikipedian way of resolving the problem many of us have had with Tony's original introduction and broad use of technical terms. What do you think? SocJan (talk) 23:13, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Redaction

It is incumbent on all members of the community to help enforce Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. In this case an off-topic discussion was blocking the discussion of improvements to the article. So, in accordance with Wikipedia policies, I redacted the article talk page to omit the off-topic material. Regarding the article title, I don't think it's ideal but it isn't horrible either. Which also describes the previous title. I don't know why it's such a contentious issue. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 11:53, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

re Pedophilia and Child Sexual Abuse

SocJan, thank you for your detailed, thoughtful and cogent message regarding Pedophilia and child sexual abuse in fiction (boys). Some of what I have to say I will say on the talk page for that article, which is a more public forum.

Regarding the quoted material I wrote earlier: I changed my mind. In particular, regarding 'abuse'... it seems that "child sexual abuse" is the received neutral term for sexual contact between adults and children... I rescind my objections.

Regarding the many seasons of love and attraction... ah this is complicated question, and any attempt to answer it is basically original research... we know what pedophilia is and what child sexual abuse is and this article should stick to that... maybe there could be a separate article for other types of love and attraction, I don't know. But the article should be trimmed rather than changing the name.

The use or non-use of "list" is not really important IMO, and shouldn't be shoehorned in if it makes for awkward style.

I didn't mean to denigrate your contribution of renaming, at all; I appreciate your time and work. Herostratus (talk) 07:19, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah I see its been renamed again... OK maybe this new title is best, if long... I don't mean to be difficult about this... the new title is OK with me. Herostratus (talk) 07:22, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Page names

Since you yourself have apparently made sure that List of works portraying adult attraction to young males excludes "pedophilia" from the title, I'm not sure what your opposition is from an artilce that covers that specific topic. I suggest that you avoid controviersial page moves and seek consensus. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 22:23, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I never said I approved. please be more careful about characterizing the views and statements of others. The opinion I expressed is disapproval of contentious page moves made without consensus. Whether the page move was "good" or "bad" is beside the point. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 23:24, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

There was consensus for the move as the scope of the article was not reflected in the page title. --neonwhite user page talk 06:01, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

see further discussion on my talk page.Tony (talk) 14:43, 27 February 2008 (UTC)Tony

Re: Resolution near (?) on how to entitle Tony Sandel's lists of books portraying sexual attraction to children

Please visit Talk:List_of_works_portraying_adult_attraction_to_young_males#Requested_move. Tony has accepted a proposal for a new title that may put to rest objections dating back to late 2006. Your input in the next few days would be appreciated. You participated in earlier discussions of this question and related questions about that work. SocJan (talk) 03:44, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

My involvement previously was limited to the task of closing an earlier requested move discussion, but I recognise that the discussions around article scope and titling there have been quite difficult to sort out, so I should be able to offer some thoughts later. --bainer (talk) 02:21, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Why not use "minors"? Also child contradicts the suggested usage, and it seems wiser to be consistent with encyclopedic use as opposed to dictionary def. Not that I would make a big deal out of it either way. Haiduc (talk) 23:22, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

[Response posted on Haiduc's Talk page; repeated here for convenience of other readers:] As attractive as "minor" at first seemed, the Wikipedia definition of the legal term "minor" proves too broad for our purposes. Have a look at Minor_(law). Here are two quotations from that entry:

"In law, the term minor (also infant or infancy) is used to refer to a person who is under the age in which one legally assumes adulthood and is legally granted rights afforded to adults in society. Depending on the jurisdiction and application, this age may vary, but is usually marked at either 18 or 21."

"The age of consent for sexual activity is often lower than the age of majority, frequently using a graduated scale based on the difference in age between the participants. There is an absolute minimum age, however, varying from state to state, below which a minor may not consent. The lowest age for a legal marriage also varies by state."

Few people would consider 18- to 21-year-olds to be appropriate subjects of the article, since late adolescents are commonly thought able to consent to sexual interest from an older person (and, indeed, in many States individuals even younger than 18 are legally entitled to marry without parental permission).

"Children", despite its problems, continues to appear to me to be the best choice. An introduction to the article could quote the Wikipedia definition of "child" and thus clarify the age range covered by the article. SocJan (talk) 07:56, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

As long as "children" is explicitly defined as including "in this instance, childhood and adolescence" I see no problem. Haiduc (talk) 11:58, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

SocJan - thanks for your comments. I've proposed pederastic filmography for deletion. You might want to take a look. Same issues arise as with pedophilia.Tony (talk) 19:39, 28 March 2008 (UTC)Tony

overhead

The least you can do is to help undo some of the damage you have done. Haiduc (talk) 11:01, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Deletions

You may have noticed that the various articles we've been working on have been proposed for deletion by an editor who is being investigated after making insinuations against Haiduc and me. Your input welcome.Tony (talk) 07:30, 8 April 2008 (UTC)Tony

re: "paedophilia and child sexual abuse" entries

Hi SocJan - thank you for your kind words on my attempts to deal with the overzealous editing of those list articles. Yes, there is a clear need to provide a "paper (or rather pixel) trail" detailing what has been done and why. I have characterised Petra's edits elsewhere as disruptive, a term which she apparently finds offensive, and pointed her to various policy pages which I hope should explain how things are normally done here. Whether or not that will do any good is another matter. It is always good to have editors who are passionate about a subject editing, but there is such a thing as being too passionate (perhaps an unfortunate choice of words, given the subject of these articles, but an accurate one nonetheless) .

As to being tactful, I hope I was but I'm not entirely convinced - I often have difficulty transferring what would be tactful when spoken to the more impersonal medium of text.

I'm glad that someone is going through the pieces checking the citations and returning items which are clearly well cited. Hopefully some sort of resolution is possible for these pages, though it would be nearsighted to assume there won't be some form of editwarring over them since they are on such a clearly controversial and emotion-charged subject. Grutness...wha? 00:32, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi, how is your blood pressure now? I don't blame you for wanting to withdraw for a while. In the meantime I have restored the introduction to something closer to what we had a few weeks ago. I wanted also to restore the earlier name (something like 'list of books portraying adult sexual attraction to children or adolescents') but I've noticed that the 'move' option doesn't seem to be available at the moment. (Is this because of some sort of protection?) My intention is that with the scope of the article restored to what we earlier had in mind, the list items can gradually be restored if they can be agreed to meet the criteria.

Any help you can give at the moment would be appreciated.The Relativist (talk) 01:00, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

On April 16, Administrator JzG, also known as "Guy", changed the name to something a bit better (it replaces "and" with "or") than what it was before all our work attempting to reach a consensus (though why he chose the Brit spelling "paedophilia" I don't know).

(cur) (last) 22:45, 16 April 2008 JzG (Talk | contribs) m (moved List of books portraying sexual attraction to children or adolescents to List of books portraying paedophilia or sexual abuse of minors: same issue as list of songs.) (undo)

He then protected the page from moves:

(cur) (last) 22:46, 16 April 2008 JzG (Talk | contribs) m (Protected List of books portraying paedophilia or sexual abuse of minors: disruptive moves, inappropriate advocacy [move=sysop]) (undo)

Neither JzG nor anyone else involved in undoing the consensus we had reached bothered to change the introduction to bring it into agreement with their new protected title. Since it was absurd to have an entry entitled List of books portraying paedophilia or sexual abuse of minors introduced with the text I had written to introduce the title they hated so much . . .

. . . This article presents a list of works of literature in which an adult is portrayed as feeling or acting on a sexual attraction to a child or an adolescent. These attractions and their manifestations range from thoughts and feelings to sexual abuse. The attraction felt by the adults may be to a single specific individual or to several children or adolescents. The adult sexual interest may be central to the plot or incidental and may or may not fit any of the various definitions of pedophilia. [ . . . ]

. . . I wrote and posted a new introduction to match their new title:

This article presents a list of books in which an adult is portrayed as feeling or acting on a sexual attraction to a pre-pubescent child or an adult sexually abuses a minor child. The attraction or abuse may be to a single specific individual or to several children. The pedophilic attraction or sexual abuse may be central to the plot or incidental. [ . . . ]

Attempts to sail against the current prevailing winds on that page will, I predict, bring the wrath of the righteous down on anyone who makes them. It seems clear that these editors will defend the current title to the death. Here is why, if I understand them accurately:

Several editors, PetraSchelm in particular, claimed (shortly after the change to the title that you and I favored) that most works on the list portrayed overt pedophilia or child sexual abuse. From which observation they concluded (without reviewing the Talk page, so far as I can tell) that the new title must be the result of some sort of plot on the part of "pro-pedophile activists" to conceal the true nature of the list by using a euphemistic title for the page. In any case they could not abide the idea that a list that includes works portraying pedophilia or child sexual abuse might fail to have those terms in its title. They seemed to reason that if they found the title deceptive and inappropriate, so would many other people using Wikipedia.

This position of theirs, of course, is the mirror image of the position I took more than a year ago when I found works on a list of works about "pedophilia and child sexual abuse" that I felt could not reasonably be read as portraying either pedophilia or child sexual abuse.

So the pendulum has swung 180 degrees. I've come to think (on my days off from Wikipedia) that maybe that's for the best.

PetraSchelm and associates may be correct (I don't know, because I am not familiar with most of the books on the list) that people who did not stop to read the introduction we provided might have thought our consensus title to be deceptive if they went directly to the list.

One option is to cede the existing page to its new title and then insist that each and every work posted on it actually fit that title. Actually, that appears to be their agenda, too. If so, I'm more than happy to let PetraSchelm deal with the people who tend to find pedophilia and child sexual abuse everywhere and want to include their "discoveries" on the list.

That would leave the possibility of creating a new Wikipedia entry limited to works that deal with non-parental attractions between adults and children that do not involve either pedophilia or harm to a child. That new entry could have a title similar to the one reached by our consensus process (such as "List of works of literature portraying non-paedophilic attractions between adults and minors"). Such an entry might be introduced with a text along these lines:

This article presents a list of works of literature in which at least one adult is portrayed as experiencing or acting on an attraction to a child or adolescent but the adult is not a pedophile and the child or adolescent suffers no harm. (For works portraying paedophilia or child sexual abuse see List of books portraying paedophilia or sexual abuse of minors.)

The attractions and their manifestations found in the works listed here range from thoughts and feelings to verbal and physical expressions of affection. They may be focused on several children or adolescents or on a single specific individual. The adult interest in a young person may be central to the plot or quite incidental.

DEATH IN VENICE would be an obvious candidate for such a list. Various other works identified by Tony Sandel that portray and explore human sexuality in general and child sexuality in particular in utopian or science fiction settings might also be candidates. As you know, this is a very difficult kind of fiction to categorize because some readers cannot see some of these works as other than advocacy for real-world deviance. Fictions that shed some light both on human nature and on real world conventions, laws, and constraints, by creating settings in which real world constraints do not apply, are mis-served by placement on lists whose premises include the assumption that real-world legal standards can be applied to the content of all fiction. That's been my major concern all along -- that challenging works of fiction not be mischaracterized as advocacy when they were not intended as advocacy and are not usually read as advocacy.

If you agree, please revert the introduction to the current page back to the text that was there on April 25, so that the protected title matches the introductory description of what belongs on the page. Consider using your introduction or something along the lines of my draft, above, on a new entry that will exclude pedophilia and child sexual abuse. SocJan (talk) 12:18, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, and a bit of a response

SocJan, thank you very much for your greatly appreciated respectful perspective on the state of the Western World in which we live. I've been spending way too much time on Wikipedia this week, so unfortunately today I don't have the time I'd like to give this, but I'll give you the response it deserves nonetheless. I am a male who was at one time a therapist, a female dominated field, and I had a general practice, so I worked with all ages, from age 4 to adults. I know all too well from personal experience that I'm sure everyone who came to my office with a child, probably wondered whether or not I am a pedophile. I took out extra liability insurance just in case someone wanted to misinterpret anything I did for an easy dollar, which does happen. My thinking was, this is just the state of society in which we live, it's something I have to deal with, and I simply refused to touch a child, ever. We all have to protect ourselves ultimately, and that's how I chose to protect myself. Ultimately though, I thought this is really alright anyway, as it's really only the parents that should be touching their own child at all in the first place. Sad, perhaps yes, in some cases. However everything in life is a trade-off, and I think the lack of touch from someone who is comparatively a stranger, is not as harmful as the possible risk of misinterpreting that touch, or the lack of touch from parents. I will grant you too there is a certain witch-hunt mentality as well from some in the mental health profession. One time I had a 10 year old boy who came to see me from some depression consequent to a school counselor branding him a "sexual harasser" for kissing a 10 year old girl. When I went to grade school, I couldn't count how many 10 year old girls I tried to kiss. Now, it's sexual harassment. Thinking like this has to be weighed in balance with the fact that people do purposefully work with children for their own sexual gratification, this has happened for perhaps thousands of years, and we're only now fully understanding the consequences, and making moral judgments about it. This will take decades to fully work itself out I think, but ultimately the consensus of the people, mental health professionals, policy makers and law enforcement of the Industrialized Wester World, is ultimately the right one. There is a lot of give and take for the age of consent laws, with the US being the most conservative at 18. However, the youngest draws the line at where pubescence begins. My thinking is that anyone with an issue with their age of consent laws is running a very uphill battle trying to change this, and their time is better spent avoiding the risk of law enforcement agents, and seeking therapy, or otherwise dealing with this issue themselves and taking responsibility for it. Most of us have some type of urge we need to control - mine happens to be a fondness for alcohol, but I find ways to make sure that I'm not a problem to others or myself. Using a professional position as a surreptitious means of obtaining sexual gratification is an abuse of the trust inherent in the position, thus this is why I'm not sympathetic to professionals who are accused of real, and flagrant, sexual contact with children. Anything having to do with prepubescent children and this is where the problems really begin. The onset of pubescence, the growth of pubic hair, is rooted in millions of years of evolution, as a safety mechanism for our successful survival, to show others who is sexually mature, and who isn't. This is why over the ages, there are taboos about incest, and attraction to children, as these taboos have a genetic component to them. Any society that still allows this has some serious public policy issues to work through. Watch the movie from India called "Water" - it's a brilliant depiction of the cruelty of marrying off female children, and the still existing almost complete disregard for the rights of females that still exists in that country. In closing, I'm completely sympathetic to the issues faced by male professionals working with children. I lived with it every day for half years. However, in my personal experience, I simply dealt with it, and never saw the need to try to change the thinking and popular consensus on the issue. Sure, history is rife with examples of the community making the wrong decision. However, each community is the some total of millions of decisions, and most of them work, otherwise we wouldn't advance as a species. Sorry for the long winded response. Thank you again for your respectful and thought provoking message. Best regards, Googie man (talk) 14:11, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Wow! Many thanks for this forthcoming and interesting and detailed response. My instincts that perhaps we might have a more nuanced exchange than I have been able to get with other editors I have encountered on Wikipedia seem to have been on target.

I would guess that perhaps I'm a bit older than you, and thus have more memory of a time when ordinary adults were less worried about being perceived as inappropriate if they showed affection to children. So the norms I learned in childhood may be skewed compared to yours.

Other comments (I'm being brief, for both our sakes!): I fully appreciate that therapists, in particular, have an especial duty to guard against any self-gratifying behavior with clients, who by definition are emotionally vulnerable and who must develop an exceptionally vulnerable trust of the therapist in order to benefit. We all know the history of that subject! But neighbors and teachers, I think -- especially in a time when so many kids are growing up in a fatherless household -- are not obviously in a similar situation to that of therapists. Sometimes a relative stranger is the only adult around who witnesses a particularly important moment in a kid's life -- a triumph over difficulty, or a serious humiliation -- and thus who can reinforce a positive response or help assuage or extinguish a child's grief or depression. I don't think I can agree with you that only parents ought ever to touch a child. Teachers and coaches and scout leaders and neighbors were all instrumental in my emotional growth. I think it would be a shame if today's kids got less support from the similarly-situated adults in their lives.

As for touch, specifically: Have you read Montagu's TOUCHING? I found it a profoundly transformative work when I first read it thirty years ago. I've been recommending it ever since, and most of those who actually read it tell me that they agree with me that it calls attention to a seriously neglected subject. And that it explains a lot of the confusion our society experiences over the signifance of human touching.

In any case, who can disagree that people who use children for their own sexual gratification are a problem? Or that this problem has probably been overlooked more than it has been addressed? Or that some kids are seriously messed up by it?

I just fear that in this case (as in many others) we need to be very careful not to embrace "cures" that could have consequences as bad, for many other kids, as the "disease" is for those who encounter it. My own parents were great people but rather cold fish, and I hungered as a kid for more affection. I was in my thirties before I overcame a serious touch-aversion and was able to sort out just what it was that I was seeking from others. In my case, I'm pretty sure it was not fear of being perceived as inappropriate that I encountered in the adults in my life; it was just Northern European over-rationality and suppression of emotion. Meeting people raised very differently taught me much!

But I do feel that too many of today's kids are encountering cold fish adults, just as I did, if for a whole different set of reasons. I've raised my own children not to fear touch, but we certainly discussed often enough the distinctions that can be made in touching. They know that sexual touching is very powerful and not to be underestimated, but they also know that not everything is sex. They seem to be faring well (now in their 20s) in a complex world where commercialism has sexualized everything it possibly can.

Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia; this IS a remarkable project and it will definitely benefit from attention from someone with your life experience. SocJan (talk) 20:39, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

SocJan - this is indeed a very constructive discussion. Again, I still get the sense of not quite grasping something.Touch, like love, like so many things human, has many layers of meaning. I think it's a case by case basis, and I think most adults know when they're giving a touch out of affection, encouragment, and when one is given for sexual gratification. If we live in a world where no one can give hugs, then it's a sad world indeed. And I certainly do not want an age of hysteria, when someone, usually a male, is suspected wrongly of having prurient interest in children. It's a worldwide phenomena that children are missing a father or male role model. Hysteria discourages males from entering fields working with children, that are overwhelmingly dominated by women as it is. I think at the same time we have to weigh into the balace a protection of children from touch that is inappropriate, but they may not know it is. It's all a balance. Thanks, Googie man (talk) 19:21, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

'Couldn't have put it better, myself. Yours will be a voice of reason and moderation in an arena that has been highly polarized and contentious. I look forward to your contributions. SocJan (talk) 19:41, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

With this question, please understand that I don't mean to imply anything at all about you. I of course don't know you at all. What I don't understand is, from what I know about pro-pedophilia activism, the movement at face value seems to be advocating for something that already exists i.e. touching children out of affection. I read a lot of negativity about "hysteria," about "ignorance" about "tragic" misunderstanding of intentions. The only question I have is "would the child's parents approve of the touch?" If yes, then I don't see the problem, however, nor do I see the reason for an activist movement. Help me understand what all this is about, so that I no longer suspect an unspoken subtext. Googie man (talk) 15:58, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Frankly, I'm completely baffled by "pro-paedophile activism". Does it even exist? The first I heard of it was by being accused of it, here on Wikipedia! I've never encountered it anywhere else in the real world.

It has seemed that anyone who comments on such subjects as you and I are discussing -- the reticence of teachers to hug kids, the disappearance of showering and abandonment of kids to unsupervised gang behavior after school sports, the universal suspicion of music teachers and choir directors who are single males -- and mentions the current hyper-sensitivity of the US public to any signs of empathy or affection or encouragement from adult males as a possible cause, runs the risk of being accused of being a "pro-paedophile activist".

I've never met a pro-paedophile activist. As it happens, I have on two occasions come to know men who confided in me that they are attracted to early adolescents. (I don't know that either would qualify clinically as a "paedophile" but they are the closest I have come to people of that description). I am rather confident that neither of them has ever abused a child in any way (but of course I could be wrong). Anyway, neither of them was any sort of activist. Both seemed extremely aware of their extra responsibility, given what they termed their natural attractions to kids, to keep their real-world relationships with children fully proper and appropriate. They completely accepted that their adulthood and adult roles made it completely inappropriate to step outside their professional roles with kids in their care, or just with kids they meet outside their responsibilities. (Now watch: Having written the previous sentences risks bringing down on me the Wikipedia posse of self-proclaimed experts who are completely sure that no one attracted to kids can fail to act, sooner or later, on that attraction. An argument that, if carried over into more familiar territory, would make a closet rapist of any man whose eye is turned by beautiful women.)

So all I can say is that even someone like you, a professional, who agrees that there have been "witch hunt" mentalities driving the search for child abusers and makes the completely reasonable observation that teachers and neighbors and other adults should simply follow the rule "Would the child's parents approve of the touch?", runs the risk here at Wikipedia of being accused of advancing a pro-paedophile agenda, as a dupe if not a closet paedophile yourself. If you doubt me, go back and read the comments that editors of the contentious pages leave on each others' Talk pages. Frankly, the current level of incivility and rash assumption has all but driven me away from Wikipedia. A certain new editor with a female German name, for example; she sees sinister agendas everywhere and is highly indignant when anyone fails completely to agree with her. Maybe she'll calm down, but this has the appearance of an hysteria rather than a reasoned position based on a calm consideration of fact. And she herself makes the point that very few true paedophile activists can be documented! I'm completely baffled. Perhaps you can explain that to me! SocJan (talk) 23:02, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

This continues to be a very enlightenging and constructive exchange, and again, I want to show my appreciation to you for the respectful tone. Here are my thoughts off the top of my head, and I'm going to keep them brief. I agree with you completely that some, many, people in the world can have strong sexual urges and have the maturity not to act on those urges. My first instinct whenever I see an attractive woman in public is to touch her, an action that would at best wind me up with a slapped face, beaten up by an enraged boyfriend/husband, or have charges pressed. I've never done this however, there are millions of men like me who haven't, and this is simply a part of living in civilized society. I fully accept the fact there are people who have an attraction to children who understand and more importantly, respect, the rules of society.

What I would say is that at a very minimum, I would think that like our eye color, or body type, science has shown there is really not much humans can do about their sexual preference. It is not a choice, it's a biologically, perhaps genetically, predetermined phenomena. With this in mind, I would think that it would be extremely distressing to anyone who has an attraction to children for numerous reasons. Besides the obvious negative ramifications, there's also the fact that sexuality is *the* primary way that humans bond with one another, a drive so powerful that it's defined by some as a need, just like food and water. To have such a powerful urge go completely unfulfilled, and the risk of fulfilling it being so great, I would think the subjective experience of this excruciating.

It seems to me, that to make it less excruciating, there are a loose band of people with similar experiences who are united in something more like a confederacy, in trying to change societies understanding of their subjective experience. One of the problems I see in this is semantic. Pedophilia is a word that has significant emotional baggage to it, and from what I can tell, this loosely banded confederacy is offering alternative ways of looking at this word. I think part of the problem in understanding is the emotional nature of this word to begin with. If I were in the loosely banded confederacy, I'd see out to use another words, words, or acronym, all together.

I won't try to speak for anyone, but only myself. And perhaps my reasons will be similar to the reasons of others. I've lived long enough to know a fairly significant proportion of people who were molested as a child. I find in my personal experience that child rape is actually rare, and it's been more in the form of what I'll call "inappropriate sexual touch" of a child by an adult. The effects in adulthood have ranged the spectrum to almost nothing, to a contributing factor in suicide. Furthermore, the concept of "child" brings out arguably the most protective instinct in the animal kingdom. One of the most vicious animals on the earth can be a mother protecting her children. Anyone's who has brought children into the world knows the slight sick worry they have that some awful fate will happen to the little human being they've brought into the world. I think what you're witnessing is the Wikipedia manifestation of this universal urge to protect.

What goes on in someone's mind is not mine, or anyone else's business. However, the way the Wikipedia article reads, one would think at minimum, there is a great debate going on as to what pedophilia actually is, that the topic is having some sort of identity crisis, and I simply don't believe this to be true at all. There's a firmly held consensus amongst professionals, policy makers, law enforcement, and Western society, and I personally think the consensus is a good one. Then again, I'll admit have no personal dog in this fight, as my sexual preferences tend to the hump of the Bell Curve of human preferences.

I certainly have more to say, but won't say it because I promised brevity, and I've broken that promise. To be continued I hope, ...Best, Googie man (talk) 14:09, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

One more thing - I can pretty well figure out what some people want, i.e. people who think more on the contiuum of myself: we want to protect the integrity of Wikipedia's information, and we ultimately want to protect children. For better or worse, right or wrong, or somewhere in between, that's what I think. What I can't understand yet is, what exactly do the people want who edit out my edits of perfectly reasonable, legitimate, sourced information, or people who say pedophilia is a preference, not an activity. What do you want from people like me, from Wikipedia, or society at large? I mean this in all respectfulness. Thanks, Googie man (talk) 14:38, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, first off, I am not among those who have reverted any of your edits. I want nothing from you other than what you also want -- which is for Wikipedia articles to have the level of dispassionate accuracy that would justify the increasing use of Wikipedia as an authority (or at minimum an excellent starting place) on any topic appropriate to an encyclopedia.

I, too, have a hard time understanding people who insist that paedophilia is a preference (just as I do with people who insist that homosexuality is a preference). While I have caught glimpses in my lifetime of the existence of a small population of risk-takers and authority-challengers, some of whom are highly sexualized, who actually do choose to "try" sex with other men or with children as part of a general pattern of risky behavior and flauting social and religious conventions and laws, surely such people are an extreme minority within the population who find themselves sexually interested in other men or in children. As you suggest, the preponderance of evidence supports the conclusion that for most people in those situations it's hardly a choice but rather the way they were wired from birth or (in some cases) a persistent result of their own childhood or early adolescent circumstances. Most people who acknowledge their homosexual orientation are quick to tell you that they would hardly have chosen to be the way they find themselves -- for the reason you give: it's terribly isolating.

Several years ago a fellow I know and respect professionally told me that he was abandoning his job and leaving my community. I asked him why -- he had done well here, was highly respected, had excellent career prospects. He had done the math, he told me, after living here several years and never having a date: This community is likely to have no more than 1500 men who might be candidates for life partnership with another man. Of those 1500, at least half would be ruled out by extreme age differences. Of those closer to his own age, he realized, many are already in long-term partnerships or are not interested in long-term relationships. Among the rest (no more than 500), fewer than 2% (10 people) could be expected to have his level of education and/or be able to muster enough interest in what he spends most of his time on to be likely to put up with him or to understand him in any depth. He had concluded that he needed to move to a city with a population of at least 1 million and an open gay community. In such a place he might have a non-zero chance of meeting someone to spend the rest of his life with before he turns 40 (he was in his early 30s).

That was a very sobering assessment to listen to. I was sorry to see him go and felt his departure a genuine loss to my community. But how could I argue with him? Imagine what it must be like for someone attracted to people much younger than themselves! I suppose we can take the last fellow's sense of loneliness and isolation and multiply it by 50 or 100.

But just because is it plausible that lonely people will seek out and build support groups with other people lonely for the same reasons does not mean that countless thousands of them actually do this. "Gay liberation" cannot be said to have achieved anything significant, much less any general acceptance of homosexuality, prior to the Stonewall Inn demonstrations of 1970 or so. And even today it is hard to find a homosexual man who is actually any sort of activist. One in 20? One in 100? And yet we have politicians who act as if "the homosexual agenda" (whatever that is) is the greatest threat facing western civilization.

As I said before, I can't detect in the real world a monstrous threat to our children in the form of a coordinated "pro-paedophlia activism" movement. I am baffled by the dozen or so editors at Wikipedia who act as if members of this conspiracy are lurking everywhere -- and even go so far from time to time as to tag people like you or me as part of this shadow threat to all our children, because we have made some comment that does not perfectly fit what they take to be Wikipedia doctrine on the subject.

I had no idea how fraught all this was until I tripped into it when I found fictions by my favorite author inappropriately categorized by an editor who was determined to expose all fictional portrayals of "paedophilia and child sexual abuse" (as he defined those terms). As our discussion unfolded on the talk page of that article, that editor found it highly suspicious that I do not read DEATH IN VENICE the same way he does (and several critics have) and effectively concluded that I must be a pro-paedophile activist or a dupe. He could not see the problem I was having with hs inclusion of DEATH IN VENICE on a list of fictions "portraying paedophilia and child sexual abuse", a classification that I firmly believe would badly bias the book's first reading by anyone who consulted Wikipedia prior to looking at the book itself.

It's all been quite surprising and baffling. Any newcomer to these pages who concludes (and dares to say) that Wikipedia's NPOV stance would seem naturally to favor such apparently neutral phrases as "sex between children and adults" is sternly warned that such language is loaded, euphemistic, and part of a pro-paedophile conspiracy to soften terms like "child sexual abuse", which the vigilant anti-pro-paedophila editors claim is the standard way of describing each and every sexual act -- in the real world or in fiction -- that happens to involve anyone possibly described as "a child" and anyone else not obviously a child, even when that sex appears in science fiction or utopian fiction where the whole point is to create an alternative to this world, suspend our disbelief, and see how that alternative world might function. And suggesting to such editors that their own uses of the terms "paedophilia" and "child sexual abuse" are sometimes imprecise and over-broad, doing violence to the technical definitions of those terms in the psychology literature, is dismissed as "disruptive editing" by what they conclude must be a POV editor.

All I can say is: Expect anything. When something outrageous happens to you here, take a deep breath and be assured that it happens to lots of people, not just to you. Editors on both sides seem to be highly touchy and quick to judge. Cut them some slack, take time to calm down, and try to be reasonable. I did not seek an education in anti-pro-pedophile-activism activism when I sought to improve Wikipedia's coverage of my favorite fiction writer, but that's what I've gotten! It has not been all bad: knowing the way cultural winds are blowing helps anyone understand current events. Such as the prison sentence handed out to my carpenter's mildly retarded 18-year-old son when he got caught in sexual experimentation with boys a bit younger than he: He's in prison for twice as long as local courts sentence first degree murderers. Where of course he himself has been brutalized. That's the world we live in. Reading what otherwise-reasonable people write in Wikipedia helps me understand this world, even if it gives me no clues how to deal with it. SocJan (talk) 08:35, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

SocJan, again, a very interesting and enlightening discussion. Unfortunately I can't spend as much time in the upcoming days as I'd like, but let me answer with a few simple statements. I've known many gays and lesbians with similar experiences as your friend. All of them, without exception, say that they would chose to have preferences more like what is considered the norm.

In my observations, in the US there seems to be a more heated sentiment towards pedophilia with stories about pedophiles amongst the priesthood in the American Catholic Church, and the Pope's refusal to do anything about it. I'm an atheist now, but was raised a Catholic, and an alter boy for many years. I can understand both sides to this - it certainly is an enormous abuse of trust from someone who is supposed to be a representative of God. Then again, all the priests I knew without exception were stellar human beings, and their very noble calling is tarnished now because of some very noisy stories in the press.

And it's this type of mentality that leads to long sentences for the mentally retarded, which to me is a travesty of justice. One of the assumptions in a free society is that the defendent is able to understand the difference between right and wrong. So I agree with your point - there IS some vigilante justice going on. So again, I agree with you. There's a lot of extremism going around, on all sides. I'll admit, it really sets my extremism off when I drive two hours to the nearest research library, find something good, only to have it reverted. I need a really *good* reason for that to happen. I appreciate that you haven't done that anyway... To be continued,Googie man (talk) 15:25, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

The next time someone reverts your work, let me know. I'm for information and against unthinking dogma; you'll find me a spirited defender of Wikipedia's NPOV rule, one of the great strengths of the Wikipedia idea. SocJan (talk) 21:48, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

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