Wikiquote:Votes for deletion/Noam Chomsky

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: keep, but trim lengthy quotes. BD2412 T 16:22, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Noam Chomsky

It pains me to do this, but there are so many lengthy essays on this page, tracts that do not qualify as "quotes" under any reasonable definition, that I do not think it can be salvaged without running into serious ownership issues with the most prolific editors of the page. Although copyright issues are not a concern, the fact that editors have insisted on adding many tracts in excess of a thousand words, and at least one that is over fifteen-hundred words, demostrates that those editors seriously tone-deaf when it comes to the vital task of separating the wheat from the chaff in a block of text. All quotes of over 275 words (which is longer than the Gettysburg Address) should be removed from this page, or at least divided into pithier segments. If the editors of this page are unwilling to concede that modicum of restraint, then the page should be deleted and salted. — BD2412 T 02:57, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

• Vote closes: 03:00, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
• Absolutely KEEP - I believe VfD is absolutely not an appropriate suggestion for action regarding this page at all. I too can agree that many or even most of the quotations on the page are excessive, and that it would be far more interesting to most people to have much shorter assertions on issues, and far fewer and smaller tracts of text, but I don't accept the idea of absolutely mandating any maximum size for quotes. No matter what problems might exist with the over-zealousness of any the primary editors of the page, if there are not enough people willing to contend about aesthetic or practical issues regarding the particular page, and NOT any rules actually mandated by legal responsibilities, I believe the content should be left largely to those who are most interested in working on it. ~ Kalki (talk · contributions) 04:49, 22 April 2010 (UTC) I certainly am not volunteering for the extensive task, but I believe many of the quotes should trimmed down, and arranged in standard chronological sections, as actually has been the standard practice on articles on people the very earliest days on Wikiquote, and one that was agreed to as a necessary guideline to prevent creation of largely inappropriate subject-based sections and excessive quote replications. ~ Kalki (talk · contributions) 05:00, 22 April 2010 (UTC).
  • The problem is not merely disinterest in the quality of the page. It is the zealousness of the self-appointed guardians of that page in actively preventing/reverting the kind of pruning that it needed. BD2412 T 12:26, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
• Delete This page fails manual of style and its pointless.(StarWarsFanBoy 15:36, 22 April 2010 (UTC))
• Keep but... I agree the page needs a major haircut. As I remarked at Template talk:Checkcopyright, the Limits on quotations essay (de-facto guideline) is not just about copyrights. It is about article quality. A genuinely high quality article would almost never exceed those limits. In cases like this, copyright is an 800-pound red herring. Including lengthy tracts to cover various theses detracts enormously from the quality of this article.   As noted on the article talk page, this has been discussed several times before. When I surveyed prior discussions in scattered venues (an exercise I am not going to repeat) I distinctly recall that a clear majority of those expressing an opinion favored trimming the long passages, but each isolated discussion received too little participation to demonstrate a conclusive consensus one way or the other. The default result was to leave it alone.   I appreciate the challenge presented by contributors who are highly invested in making an exception for this article. There may be a certain logic in using VfD to force the issue, as improvement is often the best outcome from a nomination, but this is not the same as nominating an article lacking essential elements and having them added during the discussion. I do not think deletion is the best remedy when the article contains well sourced and eminently quotable material.   At AN I explained why I think quantitative limits are a practical necessity. Provision for exceptions is also necessary, but exception by default, as decided by whoever feels most determined, is just a recipe for edit warring. I would characterize the present article as a long-running cold war, where the unspeakable nuclear option is VfD.   A proposal for handling exceptions has been discussed, and I agree it is probably unworkable. Bureaucratic quagmire is not the solution for inconclusive discussion. I think it could be settled on the article talk page with one important proviso, implicit in that proposal: Exceptions should only be made if there is a clear consensus to do so, not by default when there is no consensus. It might be useful to include this in the guideline.   Contributors to this article surely recognize it is a huge exception that has been repeatedly challenged. I would like to believe that if it is put in these terms they will accept that it should have an affirmative consensus if it is to continue. ~ Ningauble 19:54, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
• Keep .. even as is... Noam Chomsky is one of the most important and courageous thinkers of our time, so I'm not surprised that some are trying to suppress this page. This has to be purely political. The page is not that long. Chomsky wrote serious and long books and essays... not easily pared down to a few pithy quotes. Let this page be. I found it excellent. genevieve.cerf@gmail.com April 27 2010
  • The problem is not the length of the page, but the length of the quotes, some of which contain mere connective material between poignant thoughts. William Shakespeare is one of the most important writers in our history, and since all of his works are in the public domain, we could legally quote every line from every play that he wrote, and present each complete play as a single "quote". We don't do that, in part because the best turns of phrase would then be buried in the whole of his corpus. That is exactly what is happening on the Chomsky page right now. The typical observer, looking for a few pithy observations, will be turned off by the walls of text instead presented there. Please note, also, that we do have a place for lengthy selections which are in the public domain. It's called Wikisource. There is no reason that those lengthy selections could not be reduced to their most poignant sentences and then linked to a Wikisource page containing the whole speech or essay. BD2412 T 15:46, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
• Keep. I thought that VfD is for deleting pages entirely, so given that that there are numerous short quotes that no one is asking to delete, may I ask why VfD is appropriate for this discussion? IMHO there are 5 or 6 very long quotes, one of which (that's over 1500 words) I also put on wikisource here, along with the recording. The other 5 could also be created on wikisource by me or others. Regarding copyrights, note that Chomsky said in another wikisource page that he doesn't have a problem with the copyrights, and I also emailed him and he looked at a version of the wikiquote page that contained the lengthy quotes that I transcribed (3 or 4 such quotes, the others were added later by different contributors). More information regarding why copyrights isn't an issue is at the previous discussion. Regarding whether there should be a mandatory guideline that limits the length of quotes, last time we decided not to decide, if you are in favor of such a mandatory limit then please raise the issue for discussion (and I would appreciate it if someone notifies me about this discussion, sometimes I'm busy and could easily miss it). Finally, I find it deeply offensive that the Gettysburg Address is being used as the benchmark, given who was the person who gave that address, and I would like to respectfully request that if you think that 275 words is the proper limit, then find another 275-word quote to be used as the benchmark to compare with. ~ iddo999 22:40, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
  • The Gettysburg Address is a benchmark not because of who gave it, but because it is unquestionably a very famous speech, and because it approaches the outer limits of what can be considered a "quote" as opposed to an essay. The reason the entire page is nominated is because the lengthy essays included there make such a ridiculous joke of the page that it is unsalvageable unless they are reduced to their more substantive components. It is unacceptable for you to basically make a fool of Chomsky by representing, on his behalf, that a 1,500 word essay is the kind of quote one should expect to find in a quote-book. BD2412 T 23:00, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
    • Again, would you please explain why you are advocating that we delete all the short quotes along with the long quotes that you dislike? Would you please provide evidence that there are people other than yourself who think that 275 words is the particular threshold where we approaches the outer limits (i.e. that 275 is proper, and not e.g. 100, 500, 1000, etc.), to justify your weasel words "what can be considered" instead of saying "what I consider". The word "essay" is for complete written works, the lengthy quotes in this page are excerpts from speeches. Is it an objective of the wikiquote project to be similar to a quote-book, or your personal objective, or neither? Why wouldn't you use a different benchmark in Wikiquote:Quotability, there are plenty of very famous speeches other than the Gettysburg Address, that aren't offensive. How would some Albanian feel if he makes an effort and contributes to wikiquote, only to find out that his contribution is deleted because it's longer than some speech that Milosevic made where is explained why he's committing mass-murder in order to keep the country unified? ~ iddo999 07:12, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
      • Let's see, Kalki above agrees that "many or even most of the quotations on the page are excessive, and that it would be far more interesting to most people to have much shorter assertions on issues, and far fewer and smaller tracts of text", and that "many of the quotes should trimmed down, and arranged in standard chronological sections, as actually has been the standard practice on articles on people the very earliest days on Wikiquote", and Ningauble agrees that "the page needs a major haircut". I'm not sure what it is about those observations that you don't get. The question of what we use as a benchmark is irrelevant to the question of whether the quotes on the page exceed any reasonable benchmark. Consider the typical usage of quotes, as inserts in a speech or a paper used to present a particularly poignant articulation of an idea. I am not saying to get rid of every word in those long tracts, just to boil them down to their most poignant sentences. Cook away the connective tissue and leave us with the steak. BD2412 T 15:05, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
        • The question that you answered is different than the question that I asked. To see this, imagine that I would have asked you "are there people other than yourself who think that some of the quotes on this page are too long?" Your answer fits perfectly to this question, but my knowledge regarding what's the correct answer to my actual question remains exactly zero. Would you please answer my question, which was: "are there people other than yourself who think that 275 words is the particular threshold where we approaches the outer limits (i.e. that 275 is proper, and not e.g. 100, 500, 1000, etc.)?" Would you please also answer the 3 other questions that I asked you here? ~ iddo999 20:44, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
  • @ iddo999: Copyright is not at issue here. Abe Lincoln is not at issue here. The issue is the length of "quotes." The first time it was raised by you there was indeed a decision to defer the question until a later time (Village pump: Mar.–Apr. 2005), but time has passed. The last time it was broadly discussed was in formulating the Wikiquote:Limits on quotations guideline in late 2008, following extensive discussion at the village pump (primarily here and here). Whether you chose to follow the discussion through to its conclusion is not really relevant.   At issue is whether to make an exception for the lengthy passages in this article, or to trim them down or even remove them. The guideline itself is not really an issue, except insofar as it expresses a broad consensus. Even before the guideline was drafted, in the discussion linked above you acknowledged that such lengthy excerpts could be considered a big stretch. Consensus considers them such. It would be more to the point if you addressed why you think an exception is appropriate in this case. Failing that, it would be very helpful if you could improve the selections so that debating exceptions becomes unnecessary. ~ Ningauble 18:11, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
    • Just to be clear, I acknowledge that many people would agree that it's a big stretch to use the word "quote" to describe the 5 or 6 particularly lengthy excerpts, but I disagree that the rest of the page is inappropriate. From a practical standpoint, my humble opinion is that any quote that is too short to be moved to wikisource (i.e. almost all of them) should remain here as it is, unless it can be trimmed or broken in a way that doesn't deny the reader information that is relevant to make the point. ~ iddo999 20:44, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
    • Here's a quote from the Chomsky page that I think would serve just as well as a marker for the upper-bound limit:

      Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of modern industrial civilization has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy, on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits, in the classic formulation. Now, it has long been understood, very well, that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time. It can only persist, with whatever suffering and injustice that it entails, as long as it is possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited, that the world is an infinite resource, and that the world is an infinite garbage can. At this stage of history either one of two things is possible. Either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community interests, guided by values of solidarity, sympathy and concern for others, or alternatively there will be no destiny for anyone to control. As long as some specialized class is in a position of authority, it is going to set policy in the special interests that it serves. But the conditions of survival, let alone justice, require rational social planning in the interests of the community as a whole, and by now that means the global community. The question is whether privileged elite should dominate mass communication and should use this power as they tell us they must -- namely to impose necessary illusions, to manipulate and deceive the stupid majority and remove them from the public arena. The question in brief, is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured; they may well be essential to survival.

    • That's 301 words, which goes a bit beyond what is necessary, but this quote itself could easily be broken into a few choicer morsels, with some merely connective language removed:
      • Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of modern industrial civilization has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy, on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits, in the classic formulation. Now, it has long been understood, very well, that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time. It can only persist, with whatever suffering and injustice that it entails, as long as it is possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited, that the world is an infinite resource, and that the world is an infinite garbage can.
      • At this stage of history either one of two things is possible. Either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community interests, guided by values of solidarity, sympathy and concern for others, or alternatively there will be no destiny for anyone to control. As long as some specialized class is in a position of authority, it is going to set policy in the special interests that it serves.
      • [T]he conditions of survival, let alone justice, require rational social planning in the interests of the community as a whole, and by now that means the global community. The question is whether privileged elite should dominate mass communication and should use this power as they tell us they must -- namely to impose necessary illusions, to manipulate and deceive the stupid majority and remove them from the public arena. The question in brief, is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured; they may well be essential to survival.
    • And now you have smaller, digestible quotes without sacrificing more than a word of the original material. BD2412 T 19:53, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
      • I appreciate your effort to provide an example, because I think that examples can help clarify our viewpoints. Though I'd like to note that I disagree that the length of this example is problematic. The problem (as I see it) with your suggestion is that the reader cannot tell whether the separate quotes follow each other, or related to each other in some other way, or unrelated - so he might be left wondering. Maybe it's possible to come up with a technical option regarding the formatting that would reconcile our differences, something like starting each of the broken quotes with ** instead of *, though we still disagree regarding which quotes are appropriate to be left as they are. ~ iddo999 20:44, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
        • The whole point of taking quotes out of a work (rather than either transcribing or merely summarizing the whole work) is that the quotes themselves stand alone as exemplars of the point their author was making. The above subdivisions of the original quote are each sufficient as stand-alone quotes that they need not be presented as a one continuous whole in order to convey their intended meaning. Compare this to the very long quote on the page about how the English tenant class was forcibly removed from their land, and the laws protecting their welfare were whittled away. There are many small points that can be broken out of that selection, and many transitional or explanatory comments that can be done away with, to produce a more refined selection of poignant quotes. BD2412 T 21:37, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
          • Would you please answer my previous questions, especially before attempting to edit the page? I recall that I first saw this quote on zmag.org, seem like it's here now, though it's different (they had a typo then). So the person who added it to zmag disagrees with you that this quote should be broken down to stand-alone portions. The core of this dispute is your comment here: "The above subdivisions of the original quote are each sufficient as stand-alone quotes that they need not be presented as a one continuous whole in order to convey their intended meaning." I obviously completely disagree with you that dividing that quote still conveys the intended meaning, it seems to me that you have no problems to sacrifice the reader's ability to see the original intent, just to satisfy your personal aesthetic taste. I would like to request that other wikiquote editors express their opinion on this example, regarding whether these subdivisions are "each sufficient as stand-alone quotes that they need not be presented as a one continuous whole in order to convey their intended meaning"? ~ iddo999 09:49, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

KEEP: I use this page as a reference very often it is very useful to me and it would be a MASSIVE mistake to get rid of it. Please keep it its the best page you have! So what if some of the quotes are long they are important.

• If the longer pieces are that important - and not a copyvio concern - then they should be at Wikisource, where we keep documents such as the Declaration of Independence. If they are not important enough to be in the Wikisource collection, then why are they important enough to justify such lengthy outtakes here? BD2412 T 22:54, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
• Keep if trimmed. BD2412 is perfectly right above on the difference between Wikiquote and Wikisource. The entire point of a compendium of quotes is to have standalone, memorable excepts; if the reader is worried about how the quotes follow or relate to each other, they should read the work and not a quotes compendium.

Main page: "Wikiquote is a free online compendium of sourced quotations"

compendium: A short, complete summary; an abstract.

summary: An abstract or a condensed presentation of the substance of a body of material.

abstract: An abridgement or summary.

-Sketchmoose 20:23, 7 May 2010 (UTC) (who forgot to look at the date)

This is a pretty fucking huge quote page. Then again, Chomsky's quotes are always large composite descriptions. I don't think I've ever heard him give a yes or no answer.

Comment: Should this VFD be closed by now? Its past April 29 and everyone picked delete for this page.(StarWarsFanBoy 21:04, 13 May 2010 (UTC))

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.