User:MDP23/Desk/Archive/Two

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The following is an archived discussion between an advocate and an advocee. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this page.

Closed 20:30, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

vcrs (talk) on Carrying capacity

Brief (from Vcrs)

Brief: I attempted to add some scholarly critiques of carrying capacity from different perspectives; Lee Wells seems to take any critique as a challenging argument to be answered. S/he has now rewritten the whole page as an essay promoting his/her point of view (and adding grammatical errors to boot). S/he doesn't seem to understand that other points of view exist or deserve mention. I would like to reinstate the previous page. But I don't know how, and I don't want to get into some kind of war with this person. (read full description) -- Vcrs 04:30, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

First views from advocate

User:Lee Wells ~~could be violating WP:POINT (ie. he is distrupting wikipedia to prove a point)~~ by removing the section header for Critiques and apparently trying to gloss over the critiques that you added. The difficulty in this case is to ensure that the article complies with WP:NPOV which dictates that all articles must be written from a neutral point of view and that all sides of an arguement must be represented fairly.

In this case, this rule effectively means that the criticisms must be included, but they can also be disproved if done in a NPOV (neutral point of view) way - Lee Wells may have had a point of view when making his edits, so may have violated WP:NPOV in his edits. An important part of wikipedia, however, is to Assume Good Faith, so I'm going to encourage you to assume that Lee Wells made his edits in a attempt to improve Wikipedia and the article in question, and then to take action to edit the article to improve the NPOV of it. Please let me know what you think in the comments section below. If you have any input to give, please leave it in that section. After I recieve a response from you, I will contact User:Lee Wells for his opinions before drawing up reccommendations for the article as a whole, and for yourself and Lee Wells. I hope this is OK with you - if you'd prefer otherwise, please say so in the comments section. M a rtinp23 09:27, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Opinion of Lee Wells

I said this about 10 days before I made the edit:

Major Edit coming up

Critiques of application to humans will be folded into humans for the VERY simple reason that carrying capacity is (as i understand it anyway) a NUMBER -- NOT A POLICY the 'forced sterilization' argument may have usefulness under Population control, (oh wait surprise it's already there!) but in any case references need to be included. This is supposed to be a reference tool, people can't find what they need if it's mislabeled. If anyone has any problems with this please discuss here. [a google search only turned up forced sterilization and carrying capacity in Wikipedia] that should tell you something. Lee Wells 23:40, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I got no reply until I made the changes. I agree the entry does wander, I'm going to fix that as soon as I get done here. However, I feel that "ecological footprint says 'nothing' about population" is an unfair statement and 'blaming the poor for poverty'. It seemed to me to add a 'reply to the reply' would also be NPOV so I didn't try that.

If doing one's best to truly define a term is considered defending it, it would seem that textbooks are in big trouble. Rewrite complete. Let me know what you think.

Recommended course of action

Pre-closure

*Lee Wells' input to be sought done 08:17, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Post-closure (proposed)

~~Lee Wells' edits to be reverted from the article~~ - the section needs a rewrite - not a total revert
Lee Wells to be asked to keeps his edits NPOV, and not to be arguementative in his editing style
Message to be left on article talk page, requesting that all statements be sourced per WP:V and WP:CITE
Lee Wells to clear up NPOV and grammar, avoid Weasel Words and break thre "humans" section up into subheadings
Lee Wells to add the response to the critiques (fully sourced, please :)) to the foot of Vcrs' new critiques section
Lee Wells to retain the right to edit any part of the article, but not to amek ti difficult to read or POV'd - a seperate subsection for response to crticism is in everyone's best interest (see WP:OWN)
Vcrs to rewrite her critiques section as a seperate (preferably sub-)section of where the crtiques are currently located, removing them from where they are currently located and, where appropriate, leaving Lee Wells' submissions intact (ie - don't leave sometihng which is completely out of context - try to weave it into the article)
Vcrs may edit whatever she wants in the article, per WP:OWN
Article to be watched by advocate, and all major changes to be discussed on talk page
If Vcrs agrees, to avoid edit wars and disagreement in the stress of the main space, and to promote a friendly atmosphere for editing, the new version of the page could be prepared as a subpage of Carrying capacity (like Carrying capacity/temp) Let me know what you think. M a rtinp23 20:16, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Comments from Vcrs

Thank you so much for helping with this!! I really appreciate your time.

About the solution

Your solution sounds fine, overall, except that what I'd really like to do (instead of editing the current version) is reinstate the former article and ask that Lee Wells post any responses to critiques in that framework, and that s/he write in a descriptive mode rather than an argumentative mode.

I just don't want to waste time going through and undoing, piece by piece, most of what Lee Wells did, when it would be easier just to reinstate the former article.

Beyond simply the issue of critiques and responses, I just don't think Lee's rewrite improves the page--it makes it harder to understand and muddies the issues, and introduces grammatical errors as well. Reinstating the former article would resolve the other problems introduced with Lee's edit.

About the problem

I do think Lee Wells is acting in good faith, and I think s/he is just trying to make Wikipedia as good as it can be--I don't mean to accuse him/her otherwise. I don't think s/he is disrupting Wikipedia to prove a point, or doing anything else that's a serious violation of policy. I definitely don't want to attack him/her or create any kind of problem. I just needed help communicating with Lee about this.

What I don't think s/he understands is that the article on "carrying capacity" is not supposed to be defending carrying capacity. It's supposed to simply present and describe the idea itself. Presenting any critiques and responses to those critiques are fine, but both critiques and responses should be presented NPOV. There should be no arguments in the page. Arguments can be described in the third person, e.g., "others argue that....," but they should not be in the "voice" of the article. I hope you can help me with getting through to Lee Wells about the most appropriate tone for the article & why his/her writing isn't in the right tone.

I asked for help because Lee didn't really seem open to discussing it, and I saw that I was just getting frustrated and thought I was unlikely to stay calm in trying to solve the problem. I hope it's okay that I asked for help without wanting to make any accusation of serious wrongdoing.

Thanks again for being willing to help out here.

Vcrs 19:40, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Response to Recommendations

Sounds fine. I'm okay with you talking to Lee Wells. Please do emphasize that nobody is accusing him/her of any ill intention, wrongdoing, etc. and that this is not a vindictive move on my part, I just want the article to be good and informative, which I'm sure s/he also wants.

I also agree that my additions should be better cited. In fact the best thing would be for me to rewrite my additions as a summary of the critiques of carrying capacity put forth by two specific scholars; this will take away any overtones of my own opinion which have crept in despite efforts toward NPOV. When the original article is re-instated I will do that.

Thanks again Martinp23! [sorry I forgot to sign this - it was also from Vcrs, on Sept. 6 I believe]

Hi Martinp23, I saw where you have "Opinion of Lee Wells" in this page but I don't see that he has responded to your comments yet. Am I missing anything? (Maybe "opinion of Lee Wells" was already on this page before & I didn't notice...) I also noticed on his talk page he's pretty condescending to critics. Just a data point. Thanks again for everything.

Vcrs 02:25, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Response to Lee Wells's response and Martinp23's new suggested solution

Hi Martinp23 & Lee Wells,

[I changed the title of this section to "comments from vcrs" since that's all that appears here; pls change it back if that's inappropriate]

Sorry for the silence; I log in irregularly and sometimes not for a while (which is why I missed Lee's original notification that s/he was going to rewrite the page).

I looked at the rewrite and it's definitely better, less argumentative. Still could be improved... for example:

Carrying capacity is about calculating a number, not about what to do after one 
calculates the number.

could be rendered more NPOV this way:

Supporters of applying the concept to humans argue that carrying capacity is 
about calculating a number, not about what to do after one calculates the number.

Obviously, after writing that a couple times you could shorten it to "supporters," etc.

New proposed solution

Since my original contributions I've done more research (I was writing a paper at the time) and can provide a better explanation of the critiques, with more references etc.

The primary critiques are by Boserup and Netting and are not based on the type of "blame the victim" argument I was making previously; rather, they are based on the calculation method, primarily on the fact that humans can and do change their relation to the productive capacity of the land.

If you and Lee Wells agree, my new proposed solution is as follows:

I will remove my prior, clumsy, unattributed critiques and Lee Wells's references to them, leaving all Lee Wells' arguments intact to the best of my ability--thus hir responses to my critiques will simply become further elaborations of "application of the concept to humans"
I will insert a new "critiques of application to humans" section describing Boserup & Netting's work and its conclusions, properly cited (I would not be limited to Boserup & Netting; I could add more references and citations if I find them).
Lee Wells may edit my changes to hir section.
Lee Wells will agree to leave the new "critiques" section intact and not edit it at all. With one exception:
1. if Lee Wells wants to add a paragraph at the end of the 'critiques' section with referenced, cited counter-arguments of scholars in the field (geographers, economists, etc.) directly addressing Boserup and Netting's work (not just Lee Wells's own opinion), that would be acceptable.
Lee Wells would fix the following, since we didn't revert:
1. add NPOV-ifying phrases to his/her arguments, such as "advocates of applying carrying capacity to humans argue that..." (better if these could be cited/referenced names, such as, "Ehrlich argues that..." or "Ehrlich's supporters argue that..." )
2. grammatical issues (e.g. sentence fragments like "Provided the number of humans stay the same.";it's should be its throughout; sentences should all start with a capital letter). (I'm not trying to be a jerk here, it's just that these issues do appear, I'm assuming because of haste in the rewrite).
3. insert sub-headings into "humans" section to make it easier to read; consider rewriting ecological footprint section so that it refers to the ecological footprint article instead of going into so much detail here

What do you & Lee Wells think of my new proposal? I don't even know if I'll have time to do the work, but I would be satisfied with this as final status.

Postscript: In a friendly and collegial tone, I want to suggest Lee Wells update hir research on this topic. Note that hir sources are from the 1970s. Scholars and policy analysts have recently devoted a lot of attention to this and developed six or seven more nuanced ways of trying to calculate sustainability. They don't all throw out carrying capacity per se, but they do agree that it's too clumsy a tool to use for human populations, because humans have so many more ways of changing their relationship to their land use than do animals. I think Lee Wells will find more recent scholarship very interesting (seriously, I'm not just trying to prove a point). I particularly recommend the following book, which probably won't be in the bookstore but will be in any university library, and which contains an overview of the development of this debate, via a collection of articles from the last 15-20 years:

The Economics of Sustainability, John C.V. Pezzey and Michael A. Toman, 2002, Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Co.

Vcrs 19:39, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I am okay with the new recommendations but don't have time to commit to a temp page at the moment--I leave this in your (Martinp & Lee Wells) hands and will come back to do my 'critiques' section as soon as I have a chance. (btw I'm female, so it's weird to read about me referred to as "he/his" in the recommendations... :-) )

Thank you so much for your wise assistance/advocacy, Martinp23. If I don't come back for a while (an illness in my immediate family is taking up a lot of my time right now), I hope I may still contact you in the future about this page?

Thanks again & best to both Martin & Lee

Vcrs 17:36, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

(deindenting) Hi, I;d like to thank you for being so co-operative and generally helpful to me in the AmA request I've been dealing with for you. You may not have known, but that was my first case. You're welcome to contact me at any time on my talk page - I'll probably be archiving the case from the desk soon, when I close it at the AMA Board. When I get a bit of free time, I'll try to take a look at the article and improve it if I can. Sorry that I've been referring to you as the masculine on the desk - I generally use that form by default when I don't know! I'm truly sorry to hear about the illness in your family, and pass on my best wishes. Finally, I'd like to re-iterate my thanks to you for this case, and ensure you that I will always be available to help - whether for this case or anything else. Thanks M a rtinp23 19:30, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank YOU, Martin! Never would've guessed it was your first case--you were so professional and calm and all that good stuff. You're great. Keep up the good work.

FWIW, IMHO, a better default than "he" and "him" is "s/he" and "hir." YMMV. :-) (I think that's the most acronyms I've ever used in one sentence!)

Vcrs 19:43, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliments :) - I think I'll start using the "s/he" and "hir" in the future (at least when I remember!) Thanks, and all the best, -- M a rtinp23 19:49, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

The above is an archived discussion between an advocate and an advocee. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this page.