Talk:Orchot Tzaddikim

Partisan sources

The "partisan sources" template is for sourced articles, very often on controversial topics, whose sources are too heavily weighted towards one viewpoint among several.

This article is a very incomplete stub based upon an public domain article from the old Jewish Encyclopedia. As an article on a Judaic topic there is nothing partisan about that (unless there are other competing viewpoints being denied appropriate representation). But there is absolutely nothing controversial about this article! You can put on templates asking for expansion or sourcing or rewriting, but "partisan" has nothing to do with it.

You accuse the old JE of "cherry-picking" quotations in its attempt to convey some of the book's flavor or importance. Whether or not that is "cherry-picking" is besides the point: It is the author's editorial judgement, and if you don't like their judgement you can add your own quotes, change the quotes, put in a template asking others to review the quotes, etc. But none of that has anything to do with the "partisan" template, which is being used incorrectly here.

Please do not add the template again before resolving the question here on the talk page. If necessary we can ask others for their input as well. Shabbat Shalom, Dovi (talk) 11:17, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Please do not remove the template again without resolving here. For the moment I will leave it.

The quotations are done to promote a specific viewpoint, that of the JE. It is not representative of the OT; it is an attempt to show the author agrees with the "enlightened" views of a certain type of German Haskalah. The neutrality of the JE has been debated here before, such as with (now-topic-banned) editor NewmanLuke. The JE is only a semi-reliable source. I brought up the issue of a general tag on the Judaism project page, but based on a suggestion there I tagged only this particular article as a particularly egregious example. I will accept a differrent tag, but I will not leave it untagged.Mzk1 (talk) 11:44, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

I was in such a rush before Shabbat that I neglected to remove it... :-) Let's not be petty about templates. Would you agree to more positive template asking for expansion and sources? The real problem here is that the sources are limited, the JE is terribly inadequate as a single source on this topic (as you correctly picked up on by highlighting this article), and so it would be certainly be nice if people would dig up more.

As far as the JE, it is as fine a source as most. It certainly does reflect the thinking of its times and of its editors, and it is important to be aware of this as you certainly seem to be, but that is true of any encyclopedia. Would you ban encyclopedias as sources in general? Dovi (talk) 13:19, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

While I don't want to remove the article, I think that we should not have articles copied directly and solely from a specific source. Secondly, perhaps (I am not certain) one of the changes, perhaps since 1900 is that more viewpoints can now be heard. In other words, it is no longer NPOV, even if it was in 1900. Also, even at the time there were questions about the JE; my impression was that this one of the reasons for the Eisentein encyclopedia Otzar Yisroel. At any rate, Can we put up the "the neutrality of the article has been disputed" banner? P.S. Thank you for reducing the "temperature" of the discussion.Mzk1 (talk) 13:08, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

I think you are correct about Eisenstein, which is a good example of the fact that there is no such thing as an absolutely neutral source. Nor is such a source expected! Rather, what is expected is that the article evenhandedly represent the available sources. The problem here is that the article is based on a single source, and as someone already pointed out in the parallel discussion, the proper tag for this kind of thing is Template:One source, which looks like this:

Neutrality is simply not the issue here, because the article accurately reflects its source. "Neutrality" is for when the article does not reflect its sources because of possible bias (usually regarding controversial topics). Here the problem is not in the article itself but in its lack of sourcing.

In Wikipedia, if an article is imperfect, the general idea is not to remove it but to improve it. The point of tags is to mark what needs improvement. Shabbat Shalom, Dovi (talk) 13:54, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

One last thought: You mentioned at one point that you are not capable of improving the article? Why not? Use the Feldheim edition as a source, and any other sources you have. You can of course use the book itself too, and any knowledge you have of it. It's OK to improve the article without sources as long as what you write is reasonable and you tag the fact that the assertions you make still need sourcing. Dovi (talk) 14:15, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

This seems wrong. NPOV regards the topic, not the source. I think trying to change it based on the original is a bit close to OR, when the existing source is a not from primary sources. At any rate, I do not have the knowledge to do this. The one source does not point out the deficiencies of the source itself. It would be like trying to write an article on the Territories solely based on a source from the PA.Mzk1 (talk) 16:17, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Regarding Original Research, I'm personally not such a purist, and I don't see the problem with adding basic information from your own knowledge when nobody debates it. For instance, would a brief description of the book's contents based on the list of its chapters be original research? Would adding choice quotes on certain topics be OR when there is consensus among editors? I really fail to see the problem with this. Dovi (talk) 09:52, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

NPOV cannot be implemented subjectively, for obvious reasons. The way WP attempts to reach neutrality for topics about which there is controversy (and I still fail to see the controversy in this topic, since nothing about it has been debated by any editors!) is by providing sources. If there are legitimate sources -- the article should reflect them in a balanced way (without deciding between them). If you think you see bias in a WP article -- cite sources showing that bias and then rework the article based on those sources. So yes, it is ultimately about using the sources and not about the topic itself in some objective sense.

So for a PA article, provide alternative sources in order to achieve balance. But you cannot disqualify the PA source. Same thing here, except that there is no debate going on... :-) Dovi (talk) 09:47, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

--> One note on Rabbi Eisenstein. I have his commentary on the Torah, and in the introduction it says that he contributed the the JE, so it appears that his encyclopedia (which the intro says was multi-author) was not a reaction to it. But I still think the POV banner should be there. By its nature, it should not need consensus ("has been disputed").Mzk1 (talk) 20:40, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Oops. The article we have on Rabbi Eisentein says it was in reaction. That article, BTW, is an even better article on why articles should not be lifted from there. It has the notability all messed up, as if his own encyclopedia was a footnote and his contributions the the JE much more notable. But here - suppose I rewrite the article by adding from the introduction in the book I mentioned. Well, if the JE is considered a normal encyclopedia, then it should outweigh anything in a non-academic book, no?Mzk1 (talk) 20:47, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I also remember reading somewhere that it was in reaction to the JE. I'm not sure which book you are talking about, but why should something being non-academic disqualify it? There is plenty of high-quality material from non-academic sources, and if you have a quality source then the article should reflect it.

Bottom line, I'm still not sure what we are debating, if we are really debating anything at all. We seem to agree that the JE and Eisenstein are each valuable sources but with their own inherent biases. We agree that the JE picks quotes based on the outlook of its editors. We agree that much valuable information about the topic of this article is available from quality sources offline. We agree that the article could be improved by using additional sources above and beyond the JE. So why not just go ahead and improve the article? Dovi (talk) 09:47, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

I do not have the sources to add to the article, and adding my own quotes is too close to OR, even if I was familiar enough with the work to do it. If I add the structure description without modifying the quotes, then it is worse, because now I can't even put the single-source banner. So here is the question, I presume:

Can an article whose neutrality is disputed by an editor because, although it reflects the source, the source itself has a known bias - can we put the "neutrality is disputed banner on it? I wouldn't mind taking this question to another venue, third party or whatever.

In the meantime, why isn't the single-source banner still there?Mzk1 (talk) 19:35, 3 July 2011 (UTC)