Talk:Political status of Puerto Rico/Archives/2010/February

Recent edits to Controversies section

I undid various edits to this section, under the Citizenship subsection, and UN Decolonization subsection.

On the Citizenship subsection, the information provided about Judge Torruella does not take nor present either side of the controversy. While the information would be good factual information on an article about how Puerto Ricans came to receive US citizenship, its incorporation into this Citizenship subsection here distracts from the controversy surrounding the granting of US citizenship. In the process it also violates the spirit and letter of WP:NOTDIRECTORY.

On the UN Decolonization subsection, none of the edits made address the matter of UN Decolonization. In fact the name/words/phrase UN are never part of these edits. The edits, again, are not related to the subject matter of the subsection. Instead they allude to court cases, and discuss the 1952 Constitution and the Insular Cases. This is not the place for such discussions. Regards, Mercy11 (talk) 01:10, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I completely disagree on delete this information as per Wikipedia NPOV. Especially the granting of U.S. Citizens updates - You are deleting Source neutral information with third party reference and your are going directly against the Wikipedia NPOV rule. I request help of Wikipedia Administrator's to resolve these differences. The current sections are bias. I additionally include information for both sites of the controversy.

Regards, --Seablade (talk) 01:40, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Seablade, relax. There's no need for admin involvement unless we can't agree at all, don't you think? So first give yourself a chance to see if we can understand each other. Fair?

Seems the disagreement is mostly in the citizenship section. So let me ask you, why do you think I may be violating the NPOV policy in my edits in that section? Can you be more precise? Are you saying that the citizenship section WAS ALREADY biased before you first made your edits of 18:51 07 Feb 2010? Also, can you tell me whether in your view Torruella defends the US citizenship as a venue to statehood, or whether, in your opinion, he opposes it, and if, so, on what grounds does he oppose it? Thanks Mercy11 (talk) 02:07, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, here are my points. The source that I included and I just copy and paste it was the chronological history of granting the U.S. Citizens. This included that the root cause of President Wilson to sign was the war. However I din not take just one section of the history, I just try to give a holistic perspective of the issue with the third party source. No my opinion of it.

Second I refer you to the Congressional Research Service Report on the upper section of this discussion page, CRS Report for Congress RL32933 Updated on August 4, 2009 pages 9 - 11. The data that you deleted was technically copy and paste it for this third party neutral source. Not is a personal point of view, CRS reports are highly regarded as in-depth, accurate, and objective.

And third and not less important, I will cite a Wikipedia Administrator statement on the upper section of this discussion page: "Actually, that has been a major part of political campaigns for decades".

My claim of Wikipedia:Neutral point of view is that as part of an encyclopedia you should not include President Taff opinion without include President Theodore Roosevelt position and President Wilson position. There is a historical chronological order of the thing and should be presented as fairly as possible. By this reason I included on the article the source data addressing the both sites of the controversy.

Regards, --Seablade (talk) 05:57, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't disagree with most of what you are saying. The problem I see in your edits is (what appeared to be a rather indiscriminate) copy and paste from other sources without putting them in the context of their significance to the section, and thus weakening the effectiveness of the section in its function to contrast the two sharply differing sides. No one is saying your edits reflect your POV. Quite the opposite, what I am saying is that to be relevant to the section, edits need to be POV - the POV of either of the two sides in the controversy.

I am still struggling to understand how Roosevelt and Wilson's positions represent a view opposite to Taft's. That is, how R&W's statements rebutt Taft's right-on-the-money statement that the granting of US citizenship to Puerto Ricans should not viewed as paving the way to statehood. Maybe what you are saying is that Pres. Wilson opposed Taft's declaration (that citizenship and statehood were not connected) when he stated that Puerto Ricans had earned their right to be more like the other citizens and territories? Or maybe what you are saying is that there is another area of controversy within the citizneship issue, namely that one side claims it was done to draft Puerto Ricans into WWI while the other side claims, "No true." If that is your point, then we need to find citations for these 2 opposing positions, and of course, we need to provide a merit to the "Not true" position, such as "Not true, because Puerto Ricans had already been participating in US wars since before the granting of US citizenship". So which of these two is the point you are making? the first one? the secodn one? both? neither one, but a third one yet that I have failed to list?

By including a strictly chronological history of events surrounding the granting of citizenship, especially if in large amounts, we run the risk of losing focus in presenting the relevant arguments of the section. Perhaps, rather than including the text verbatim you could massage it a bit into your own words to unambiguously state which of the two sides Roosevelt and Wilson defended (and why), but without being so prtracted that you lose focus and we end up adding loads of text that distract from the subject matter at hand - namely, the motive behind the granting of US citizenship to Puerto Ricans. Bear in mind that this section would not be the place for a comprehensive history of the granting of US citizenship to Puerto Ricans. If that is your goal, maybe we should instead create a new article just on that subject, with links from this article to such new article as appropriate. Mercy11 (talk) 14:33, 10 February 2010 (UTC)