Talk:Ashes and Snow

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Unbalanced "Reviews" section

Scanning this article's history, there seems to have been some struggle between those on one side who are concerned with maintaining the article's balance/objectivity/NPOV, and on the other side one or more users who have added lots and lots of positive excerpts from reviews of the exhibit (and most recently, are deleting negative reviews).

WP:NPOV states: "Some Wikipedia articles about art, artists, and other creative topics have tended toward the effusive. This is out of place in an encyclopedia."

I question whether this article really needs the "Reviews" section.

However, if it is to have one, the section ought to have some balance among the chosen quotes. Obviously critics' reaction to this installation have not been universally positive; the New York Times' review is positively scathing.

Those are my thoughts... anyone else? AtticusX (talk) 18:05, 28 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think a Critical Reception section is appropriate, but it should be culled back to a few reviews that represent the general tone and comments both positive and negative ... suggest perhaps recutting the section as prose rather than a long list of quotes as well. cheers, --guyzero | talk 18:15, 28 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I'd agree with that. Problem is, as you've seen, the main contributors to this page (or contributor plus sock puppets) keep deleting negative reviews! -- or rather, now that there's only one negative review left in this article, they keep trying to delete THE negative review. Somebody is being crazy protective of the Ashes and Snow brand image, and is willing to violate Wikipedia rules to get their way.

One excuse given for the NYT quote's deletion was that it was redundant -- heh, nice try -- and now it's allegedly because the reviewer was racist. (That one made me LOL.) An ironic claim, as the NYT reviewer found the exhibit offensive partly because she perceived in it a "colonial" attitude. BTW, the "cultural tourism" thread seems to be a fairly important aspect of the NYT review's criticism that is currently omitted from the excerpts included here.

Anyway, yes, the sprawling gush that dominates the "Reviews" section is inappropriate, and I encourage anyone with condensing skills to tackle the monster. But beware of possible sock puppet censors with a conflict of interest. AtticusX (talk) 21:52, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hopefully the folks who are so concerned about this single negative review will back off it so we can spend some time to actually make this article better. --guyzero | talk 05:56, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am the Chief Operating Officer of Flying Elephants Productions, the company that produces Ashes and Snow. I am new to using Wikipedia and did not understand that we should not include so many reviews. So I will remove a good number of them. I made one attempt to remove the Roberta Smith New York Times review because it contains a number of factual inaccuracies, including how the show was funded and who was responsible for the interior design. While very, very few completely negative reviews have appeared, I will gladly post a more constructively critical article. With hundreds of raves, such a spiteful review seems to unfairly skew the section. I hope this resolves the dispute!˜˜˜˜ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Redpenciledit (talk • contribs) 22:24, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Further to the note above, can anyone explain to me how to go back and remove some of the reviews and insert others that might provide more balance? Redpenciledit (talk) 22:29, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Since you are involved, you have a clear conflict of interest. Please read WP:COI, but basically know that yuo aren't the right person to add/remove reviews, as it would be hard to do so in an objective way. If you feel a specific review should be removed, or something should be rewritten, please post your change here so others can review it. Thanks!

As far as the NYT/Roberta Smith review is concerned, note WP:V begins by saying "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth". tedder (talk) 22:37, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see. I suggest that you remove any number of the positive reviews and get them down to a reasonable, informative number. The Los Angeles Times from 2005 seems redundant, and maybe remove the LaRepubblica from 2002 because it is translated from the Italian? Perhaps best to keep the Roberta Smith there if it is causing mistrust. As I said, my concern is that it isn't actually balanced to include one bad review among the literally hundreds of favorable ones that have appeared since 2002. Can you advise? I certainly want to resolve the dispute.67.90.50.194 (talk) 23:00, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not to worry. As myself and Atticus discussed above, we'll be rewriting the reviews section as a paragraph or two of prose that summarizes all of the critical reception, rather than a long series of quotes. This is both more readable and engaging for the viewer (and more encyclopedic, less like an advertisement.) Minority opinions (like the Roberta Smith review) will be clearly noted as minority opinions, which I believe addresses your main concern. Unfortunately, I do not have time to undertake this today, but there is no real urgency and another editor may boldly jump in and get it done.

Per our policy on COI, you are very much welcome to suggest any changes you would like to see on this talkpage. Other than reverting blatant & obvious vandalism, please do not edit the article. If you are unsure of whether something is vandalism, please post a notice here and we'll make the necessary edits.

Also, please note that using multiple accounts to make edits is against our sockpuppeting policy. Abusing this policy will get all accounts blocked/banned. Please pick one account and stick to it so we can communicate with you easier.

If you have any questions at all with regards to any of our policies, please feel free to post a note here or on my talkpage and we'll do our best to help.

To reveal some of my own biases, you should take it for granted that some of us (like myself) have watchlisted the article because we are interested in the subject. I personally loved the movie, so I watchlisted this article to protect it from vandalism. Anyway, it's unfortunate due to the edit warring that this article needed to be locked so that anonymous and new users cannot edit it. That takes away from the spirit of wikipedia, "the encyclopedia that "anyone can edit." Please work with us within our policies so that we can both unlock the article and hopefully find that the resulting article will be much improved. kind regards, --guyzero | talk 23:55, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is good news and very helpful. Thank you! As I said, I am trying to understand how things work on Wikipedia. In the meantime, I am hoping we can get the Reviews section fixed and the flags removed. Is there some way for me to assist in clearing up this entry completely and resolving any violations I may have unwittingly committed? I am really concerned as these issues undermine the quality and integrity of the project!Redpenciledit (talk) 15:38, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I remove most of the TV-Channels for following reasons: 1. A huge, unreadable list of TV-coverage makes the subject seem more important, w/o adding any important info (pov) 2. If wikipedia was to list all TV-coverage for every exhibition, movie, book etc., articles would have to have page long list of that, it's just irrelevant. --Sfenex (talk) 19:07, 7 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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