Talk:Character mask/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Article size

At 185KB, this article is very long, making it slow to load and difficult to edit. WP:SIZE advises that articles over 100KB long should generally be split if possible. Would it be possible to break some sections of this article off into separate article(s), per WP:Summary style? Robofish (talk) 16:23, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

It could be done I guess, but why? Length is not much of a practical consideration. A page like Astronomy, for example, is 250 KB and it's been edited by 1000+ people. Many more examples could be cited. A better reason would be, that some content in this article doesn't really need to be there, or that a shorter version will do the job nicely. My experience though is that people prefer the long version, and prefer to have the references there, since there is hardly any other comprehensive reference article on this topic in English. User:Jurriaan 3 February 2011 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.144.162.215 (talk)

That statement on Astronomy is a little misleading - the astronomy page is only ~5500 words long, the size is mainly images. This page is mainly text and at ~16,000 words is 3x larger and far too long to comfortably read in one session. Chaosdruid (talk) 14:59, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Well then, what is the objection? That the article is difficult to edit? (As the writer, I am the only one who has being doing content edits and I don't find it difficult to edit) Or that the article is to long? If it is too long, how long should it be? I am intending to do a rewrite of the whole article, but haven't had the time for it yet. User: Jurriaan 28 March 2012 13:03 (UTC)

The article is way too long and complex to read comfortably. It's not an encylopeadia article. Have you thought about publishing this elsewhere and then just putting a summary on wikipedia? It's almost a book! Halon8 (talk) 00:53, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

I am in the process of preparing a publication, and have reported some of my basic findings in the article. I will try in the near future to write another article which is only a screenfull. If people want to read the whole thing, they can then consult the archive. Meanwhile the article has already been stolen. User:Jurriaan 22 April 2012 14:55 (UTC)

In defense of the length of the article, quite simply, the concept of character masks and social masking is a very important concept which has had an enormous influence on world culture. And the concept played a crucial role in the development of Marxist theory worldwide, even if English-speaking Marxists erased the concept in translation. It is not just me who thinks there is a lot to discuss - someone like Richard Weihe has written a treatise of the theory of masks which spans 364 pages of text with a bibliography of 22 pages. Have a look at the size of the article on the Glass–Steagall Act, for example. You might wel ask, why is that article so large? Isn't it too large? You cannot read it at one sitting probably, but nevertheless the article is used 50,000 times per month. User:Jurriaan 29 April 2012 18:43 (UTC)

A Marxism article about everything except Marxism.

I have labelled this article, Character Mask for clean up, in order that it be rewritten specifically about the subject, Economic Masking, as applied in Marxist economics, and not about the opinions of an editor who feels very strongly about the subjects, including the Marxism.

24.1.181.44 (talk) 14:19, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

An editor who wrecks articles because he doesn't know what he is talking about and disrespects the work of others

I do not know the identity of this editor/wrecker, but I will make a few points to rebut his ill-considered opinions.

• (1) As the originator of this article and its main editor, I never titled the article "character mask" but titled it "character mask (Marxism")" because I am well aware that the term character mask is also used in theatre, and in costume hire. Another editor changed the title to "Character mask".
• (2) As I have carefully explained and documented in the article, Marx originally used the term character mask in a philosophical context, then in a political context and finally in an economic context. Subsequently, as I have explained, numerous Marxists have applied the term in many more contexts. My critic seems not to have read the article at all.
• (3) It follows that, insofar as this article is, as I have emphasized, about the concept of character masks in the Marxian tradition, then reducing it to "economic character masks" would simply fail to do justice to all the other uses of the term in that tradition.
• (4) If incompetent editors who have no knowledge or expertise about the topic touch this article, I am simply going to reset it until they fuck off, or bother do some research on the topic. I certainly do not want ignorant, illiterate people to screw up this article. A lot of work went into writing it, and I don't intend to let it be ruined by some pratt who thinks he knows better without providing any reasons of evidence for his high falutin' opinions. User:Jurriaan 8 June 20 0:49 (UTC)

A high-falutin’ reply

Dear Effendi,

I get it, I fuck off (for) now . . . but the facts remain . . . the article is mostly about the secondary and ancillary and supplemental topics, best left at the pub. Please, reorganize the article into Marxism, Background, and Other subjects . . . otherwise, it remains a Marxism article by an anti-Marxist. I read your correspondence . . . "these people" and "those people who believe in this. . . ." are telling comments. Please, trim the cruft, and I shall consider removing the tag, as soon as I get off shift at the cultural industry manufacturing plant.

24.1.181.44 (talk) 23:21, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

I am not an "effendi". Nor am I anti-Marxist or pro-Marxist. I am reporting about the history of a concept in this article. If people think that I have done it wrong, it is their good right to suggest alterations - if indeed they can provide good reasons or evidence for making changes. Your editing style however is purely destructive - you destroy well-written articles basing yourself on a formality so that they become unreadable rubbish. And why? Because you lack scholarly skills, and because you don't have genuine in-depth knowledge of the articles you edit. You confuse editing with chopping firewood. They are not the same things. I warn you: if you thoughtlessly make a mess of articles I wrote, I am going to revert all the edits, and I am going to keep doing it until you butt out of things which you have no real experience with. And BTW: you are not even logged in as a wikipedia user. User:Jurriaan 8 June 20 1:51 (UTC)

Reduction edits

In an effort to reduce the length of the article, User:Nikkimaria has chopped out quite a few bits of the article, without stating any reasons. So let's just say that the article I intended was the version at 1 September 2012, before other users started to chop into it. User:Jurriaan 2 September 2012 21:33 (UTC)

Fair enough. I see from the note above that you intend to write a full-length book about this concept - you should have more editorial control, and more room to expound at length, in that medium. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:51, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I have tried to show in this article that the concept of character masks is not such a cut-and-dried idea, and that it involves much more than a superficial understanding would suggest - the matter is not as straightforward as it seems. That is I think the reason why different theoretical interpretations have proliferated, and also the reason why translators had difficulty with it. No doubt any article can be improved or made more succinct, but I hope the substantive content will withstand subsequent editing operations. User:Jurriaan 5 September 2012 19:45 (UTC)

I have read the re-edited article through another time, and I notice that the relevance of some passages is no longer clear, because the text which made it clear has been wiped out by the wiki administrator. I therefore suggest that people who are interested in probing this topic further refer to the original article, as it was on 1 September 2012 (in the history archive of this article). User:Jurriaan 16 September 2012 20:10 (UTC)

After checking some references, I've found that after the reduction edits some references no longer make sense and do not refer to the text. Once again, I therefore suggest that people who are interested in probing this topic further refer to the original article, as it was on 1 September 2012 (in the history archive of this article). User:Jurriaan 5 January 2012 11:33 (UTC)

I have noticed that Nikkimaria reused bits she chopped out of the character mask article in the mask article. So bits of my text have been "recycled" elsewhere although it is not acknowledged on this page. User:Jurriaan 20 March 2013 20:00 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.64.48.162 (talk)

Article length

The article needs to be shortened because it cannot be comfortably read in one sitting. Although this has been discussed earlier (Talk:Character mask#Article size), this issue wasn't resolved.

The existence of other articles which are also too long does not mean that Character mask isn't too long. Arguments that this article doesn't need to be shortened because other articles (such as Glass–Steagall Act) are also very large are not convincing.

The article size guideline is not meant to be arbitrary. Technical limitations have pretty much been removed as computers are now able to load and edit long articles without problem. The issue with this article is that no normal person could reasonably be able to read this article in one sitting.

This also isn't a question about content notability. The article appears to be well-sourced and well-written, but surely the comprehensive sections can be split out into individual articles (maintaining notability and depth) while retaining a succinct summary (improving readability). If structured well, regular readers will be able to find the same information while new readers will find the article more accessible.

Please let me know what you think. Kind regards, Matt (talk) 05:35, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

As the author of the article, I would object strongly to the article being chopped up into bits, mainly for the following reasons. Firstly, the concept of character masks in the Marxian tradition has a clear history and an intellectual tradition which stretches from Marx and Engels to Lukacs to Adorno to Zizek, as I have described. It is proper that the evolution of the concept should be described in one place for the reader to evaluate, and not scattered away in numerous different articles just because of the whim of some wikipedian who doesn't like the number of bytes in the article, or because some academic is jealous of the overview provided. Secondly, if the article was chopped up, then the overall meaning and significance of the concept is lost between different articles, and it just becomes more confusing to the reader who wants to understand the issues related to the concept as a whole. Thirdly, the fact that maybe the article cannot be read at one sitting by some readers is not a good reason in itself to chop up the article. There are many articles in wikipedia of the same size and larger, and they have never been chopped up. The reason is, that everyone who knows about the subject, also knows that there is a packet of issues essential to the subject, which have to be in the article. A good reason for chopping up the article would be, if it contained clearly distinct and separable topics, which would be searched for by users under distinct topic names. But I don't think the topics are separable and in fact if people want to know about the Marxian concept of character masks, they will search for that, and they want a complete overview of the concept and the issues related to it. Fourthly, the fact that some readers cannot read the article at one sitting is not a good argument for chopping it up, since many readers may not read the whole article anyway, but only the sections which are of interest to them. And if they don't have the time or mental ability to read the whole article through in one sitting, they can jolly well read it in several sittings - what is the problem with that? Why should an article on the Glass–Steagall Act be allowed in wikipedia, while this article on character masks is chopped up? It doesn't make any sense, and in fact it is a highly biased approach. If people search for the Glass-Steagall Act, they want an overview of all the issues related to the Glass Steagall Act, or maybe they have a specific interest in some issue directly related to the Glass-Steagall Act. They don't want to have to search high and low through many different articles to find what they are looking for. And so the article has stayed the large size it is. Lastly, let me emphasize that although wikipedia is an encyclopedia which anyone can edit, that does not mean that anyone should edit any article, on a whim, or because of some gripe. Articles should be edited by people who are knowledgeable about the subjectmatter and the content. If anyone edits anything just when he feels like it, the quality of wikipedia articles will go downhill. So what I would like to know, Matt, is what scholarly or scientific expertise you can offer on the topic of character masks. User:Jurriaan 26 October 2012 10:51 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.64.48.162 (talk)

One point I could add is that I have have numerous very positive responses to the article from people who liked the overview provided, which wasn't available anywhere else. These included wellknown academics, and nobody who has read the article through has ever complained to me about the length of the article (except for the readers cited on this talk page, one of whom cut out of lot of the material from the article). The article is now getting 5,000+ hits per month, up from about 2,500+ hits, which suggests that the article is being useful and succesful regardless of length. User:Jurriaan 26 October 2012 11:21 (UTC)

I suppose that the main design fault in the article is that I gradually added to the article as I was finding more material, rather than settling the structure of the article first. That however is not a reason for cutting up the article into separate pieces. Rather, the article should really be rewritten to conform better to wiki standards. Alas, I lack the time for that just now. User:Jurriaan 31 October 2012 10:58 (UTC)

I don't agree with the fact that it should be split up. First of all, the problematic of it being big and extended is part of 'marxist development' itself. The marxist movement has been very broad, so necessarily articles that really want to grip certain concepts in their historical (and thus diverse) interpretation tend to become large.

Secondly, the section on marx's argument in das kapital shows how this theorization is an essential aspect in understanding marx. This can't be included in the other sections on marx's theory (namely value-form theory or alienation or commmodity fetishism). This part deals more explicitly with the cultural or subjective countering of commodity fetishism wich is implicit in marx's theoretical critique as a whole, but wich isn't explicitly theoretically developed at any other place than in his more philosophical and political writings. In this sense it gives counterweight to the often highle objectivist interpretation of marxism.

Lastly, i found the article very helpful and enriching. It's true that you can't read it in one sitting session, but by splitting it up you can't have the overview you have now. There are lot's of posts which are shorter but not so readible like this, the style is very fluent. And the categorization is very sufficient and clear. I think the writer should decide, since he wrote it and the quality of the article is very high.

141.134.34.37 (talk) 17:51, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

The oddity is that this article on character masks was rated by wiki administrators as "B class" meaning "The article is mostly complete and without major issues, but requires some further work to reach good article standards." Yet Matt wants to butcher the article on the ground that he cannot read it all while eating a peanut butter sandwich. It seems to me that, at this point, the argument becomes totally arbitrary and whimsical. First, the article is said to be "complete and without major issues" and then it is said that it should be subdivided into different articles. It doesn't make sense. Moreover, if it was to be subdivided, how would you actually do it? Matt neither offers reasonable grounds for splitting up the article, nor does he explain how you would actually do it successfully. User:Jurriaan 4 November 2012 12:40 (UTC)

There appears to be no concensus to split at this time. Op47 (talk) 21:46, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Theft of the article

After the author of this article was lambasted by a third-rate academic tyrant for his effort, this article on character masks was stolen in 2011 by a company called "Webster's Digital Services" and published for private profit, fraudulently presenting someone called "Stuart Sloan" (a fictitious name) as the author and editor. See: Stuart Sloan, Political Concepts: Character Mask and Marxism. Webster's Digital Services (May 12, 2011) ISBN-10: 1241686726 ISBN-13: 978-1241686727. It is advertised on Amazon.com The claim of the publishers is that the article is being "curated" under a creative commons license, while all they do is extract private profit from the sale of the article with a false claim to authorship. Wikipedia authorities did nothing to stop this fraud. User:Jurriaan 31 October 2011 14:12

Content from this article was also lifted by Emereo Publishing, and published without acknowledgement in: Kevin Roebuck, Identity Management: High-impact Strategies - What You Need to Know: Definitions, Adoptions, Impact, Benefits, Maturity, Vendors. which sells for $39.95 on the Emereo website.[1] Excerpts from this Emereo book are also available on Scribd.Jurriaan (talk) 12:38, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Initial comments

I am still working on this article - I aim to expand it some more later, but appropriate additions are welcome User:Jurriaan 19 July 2010 23:39 (UTC)

It's certainly an interesting article. The assumption that people have a true authentic self, which character masks differ from, is implicit in the whole concept. A lot of modern thinking would put things the other way around; that the self is nothing but a collection of "character masks". -- The Anome (talk) 09:44, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the comment. It is not the purpose of the article however to discuss the concept of the authentic self, merely to define the concept of character mask and illustrate how the concept has been used. There is, surprisingly, a great paucity of literature on the concept in the English language, even although the term is still used by scholars and journalists. That's why I thought an article might be useful.

I do not claim to know everything about the subject, but I do think the idea that the self is built up exclusively out of a "layering of character masks" fails.

The two main reasons I have for this are:

(1) that human beings emerge in the womb and begin life already before they really know how to mask themselves in social and physical settings.

(2) much of the life-experience that shapes their identity requires an unmasked (spontaneous) response from them, and that response may often be unmasked, precisely because the individual has not yet learnt to mask it, or does not know (yet) how to mask it (we say for example that "someone is caught out unawares").

In other words, to a very large extent, masking has to be learnt, something that is admitted by Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson.

Whereas some masking may be instinctive or genetically coded (a primal urge to protect oneself by covering oneself, inscribed in the human species as an evolutionary adaptation through an enormously long battle with nature, which perhaps begins with shading the eyes), I would think that a real character mask (as distinct from a neutral mask) cannot be genetically transmitted, because its formation requires that the living individual can creatively draw or improvise a distinction between his/her own identity and the identity which the environment or social setting requires of him/her. That setting, and its changes, is not itself given by genetics. At best genetic structure can provide a certain disposition towards certain kinds of adaptations, responses and choices.

In other words, the character mask presupposes that there is a character which can be masked with another character in a more or less conscious way, in response to, and in interaction with, enviromental or social settings. This requires from the individual that a sub-conscious or conscious distinction can be made between the "real" character (the stable personal traits the organism has) and the character mask created.

No doubt that distinction is not absolute and may not be easy to draw; people can "mutate" in some sense, or develop into a different identity through some kind of "system shock", and the lengthy habituation to a role may make it part of the normal character of the person.

My argument is, that the character mask is a character masked by another character. Your argument I think is, essentially, that "the mask masks another mask" ad infinitum, somewhat analogous to an image reflected in an endless series through two faced mirrors. It is just that I think, that the human memory empirically contains traces of both masked and unmasked responses, and thus, there does exist a distinction between "authentic" and "masked" characteristics, even if that distinction may be difficult to define in practice, particularly if the individual habitually masks his behaviour as a survival strategy.

The term "human character" is not a completely "scientific" and "measurable" concept, insofar as it refers not just to durable traits, but to a moral dimension in a dual sense: the typical ("characteristic") way in which individuals or groups evaluate their own experience, which is influenced by their surrounds, social and physical - and, crucially, to how these evaluations are evaluated by others at the same time, socially. We may be able to predict human character fairly accurately in a probabilistic sense, but it is not fully predetermined, insofar as the individual always has the ability to make choices (some degree of behavioural flexibility) and indeed to form "a new mask". And therefore human character is not completely fixed once and for all, but amenable to change in various degrees.

The concept of "authenticity" is likewise in dispute, because it could refer to "how I usually or normally would do it", or it could refer to "how I necessarily have to do it, being what I am". It is ultimately just very difficult to define authenticity, through a series of negations and affirmations, without resorting to tautology ("my definition against yours", "this is what I mean"). In the end, people are likely to say, "well, this is how I am, believe it or not."

This sport of analysis opens up a whole area of research which I cannot cover in a wikipedia article. I could for example include examples of CIA torture of prisoners who do not want to reveal their identity, and so on. I have to consider the intention of wikipedia and its protocols, and not overdo things. The ordinary reader wants a brief and succinct introduction to the concept, and the issues related to it, not a dissertation (I reference some dissertations). However, a brief indication of your idea could be included in the article (I already list some concerns under the "criticism" heading). I have also referred in a note to the idea of a "chameleon personality" such as it is used in the literature. User:Jurriaan 12 August 2010 15:48 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.136.223.40 (talk)

First off I'd like to say thank you 4 lightning me Witcher Best knowledge The way you can wordI can definitely already tellI can definitely or detail I'm logged off Maybe 1 day gets opportunity of the sit down breakup coffee in Speech brain The knowledge the to hold this fast And I can tell you love the shirtDustin masculineS_m_s coming What stress over to order a handle on your own Grand caravan mass The cover of something you're not comfortable with Overcoming to meet I think you can have Certain things to play mask End of believe the matter how many miles care dumbass a person puts on the door was tom on top of the return Humptybogart (talk) 01:10, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Article length again -- third attempt

The article's length and level of detail may make it appropriate for an encyclopedia on Marx, but not for a general encyclopedia like WP. It really needs to be shortened and made more succinct. Marked as such. Sleety Dribble (talk) 14:32, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

--Speaking as a Marxist: why is anyone surprised that Marxists wrote an article about their own philosophy that is both overly long and only interesting to a small audience? This is, like, the thing we're best at and most enthusiastic about --JeremyCorbynsSeventhBiggestFan — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.42.149.140 (talk) 21:32, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

10 Worst Articles on Wikipedia

WHAT is this sentence supposed to mean? "Economic analysis not only studies the total social effect of human actions, which is usually not directly observable to an individual, other than in the form of statistics or television." I am just asking why "...or television"? And in fact asking what the sentence has to do with the article at all? I'm apparently not the only person who finds the article rather odd. According to http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-worst-wikipedia-articles.php "this page... is mostly maintained by two people who are probably mentally ill. This is Wikipedia at its worst". Have a great day on the ant hill.

Yes, this article is currently in awful shape and totally deserves to be on that list! (even this Talk Page is a trainwreck...) Perhaps a lot of it is a WP:CONTENTFORK for Marx's other theories?

At the very least, it needs a complete overhaul by someone who understands the topic and can write in a succinct and accessible manner. I wish that person the best of luck. Cheers, 1292simon (talk) 07:54, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Explanation of recent changes to antihumanism section

Both "neo-Stalinism" and "structural-functionalist" are incorrect characterizations of Althusser. The rest of this section is also very biased, but it would require rewriting to correct, so at the very least such inaccurate labels should be removed. It is also not appropriate to describe Althusser's perspective as "totalizing" as though this were objective fact (it is misleading because he presents a critique of different types of totality). So this should be attributed to one particular perspective. The second paragraph of the section "Marxism as a character mask" does not support any of its claims, and does not explain why they are relevant to the preceding discussion. It is highly inaccurate as a characterization of Althusser, so it should be removed and the sections should be merged. The use of the term "totalitarianism" preceding this is not supported. While the rest of these sections are contentious interpretations, they are prevalent enough interpretations, with some correspondence to the literature, so they can be left despite their bias. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.38.3.171 (talk) 15:44, 13 February 2021 (UTC)