Talk:The Ribbon International

Article tone

Portions of the text need to be reworked to have a less familiar, reverential and promotional tone. Examples:

• After the first mention of their full name, people should be referred to by their last name
• "The project had fulfilled and surpassed the dream of Justine Merritt."
• "Justine Merritt was followed by a camera crew every joyful tear of the day."
• "Nine "Ribbon" cameras were given priority positions in the National Cathedral to capture the beauty and the emotional words of the service of dedication"

--NeilN ^{talk to me} 02:43, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Were you even alive in 1985 or being aware of the times? Justine Merritt is dead, so how can I promote her? Have you conceived an idea that had it turn into a national event of three years duration and had over 2,500 articles written about your idea?

I've seen numerous Wiki pages where the person's first name and last name are repeated. I'm busy researching and writing three book and don't have the time to go back through Wiki pages looking for the documentation you are requesting and images.

The information that you make reference to is contained in quotes. Go watch the video and see what took place in the Washington National Cathedral and the interviews with the people for the event. It was only the 2nd time in the history of the National Cathedral, for the largest number of people in attendance. Don Wilcox was in attendance and wrote an article in The Craft Report, entitled "Peace Ribbon Wraps Washington in Largest Collaborative Craft Event in American History". In his article he says, "At one point during the service, the full house in the Cathedral tied all the segments together into a prayer for peace and held them a1oft beseeching all gods and governments everywhere to listen ... to hear! That moment was without doubt the most overwhelming visual craft event of my lifetime; I was overcome with a waterfall of tears." Numerous people had shed tears that weekend, I was trying to capture the emotions of the event as was captured on film and in writings.

"The Ribbon" was a vision of Justine, or could it be considered a dream that became a reality. A letter to the Editor of the New York Times was entitled "Wrapping Washington in a Ribbon of Love" - NYTimes.com August 20, 1985.

Thumbnail sizes

Images beside the text should generally use a caption and the "thumb" (thumbnail) option; the default results in a display 220 pixels wide (170 pixels if the "upright" option is used), except for those logged-in users who have set a different default in their user preferences. In general, do not define the size of an image unless there is a good reason to do so: some users have small screens or need to configure their systems to display large text; "forced" large thumbnails can leave little width for text, making reading difficult. In addition, forcing a "larger" image size at say 260px will actually make it smaller for those with a larger size set as preference.

Sometimes a picture may benefit from a size other than the default; see the Manual of Style for guidance. Where size forcing is appropriate, larger images should generally be a maximum of 500 pixels tall and 400 pixels wide, so that they can comfortably be displayed on the smallest displays in common use. Lead images should usually be no wider than "300px" ("upright=1.35").

Width in pixels

You can also display an image of a specified width. Typically, if you specify a width in pixels, it should be at least 300px. Widths greater than about 550px may cause problems with some browsers, as stated above.

--Susan Macafee (talk) 04:52, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

"I was trying to capture the emotions of the event as was captured on film and in writings." This indicates why the article has issues. It needs to be written in a dispassionate tone, and not as a magazine article or as a celebration of the movement or "Justine". As for the logo - is the text beneath it really part of the official logo? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 05:02, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I can see that it's not. Will you submit a correct logo or shall I? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 05:06, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I am waiting for an email reply from the Executive Director, who gave her approval and permission, which was sent to Wikipedia to use the logo image.--Susan Macafee (talk) 20:35, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Not sure what kind of reply you're waiting for so I've changed the logo myself. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 21:18, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Susan Macafee asked for the image to be reverted. It seems like if there is a fight over which image is correct, it would be better to upload both files under different names, and discuss/edit in the article, instead of fighting over it on commons. Bawolff (talk) 05:10, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I feel I must chime in here as I accepted the submission at WP:AfC. User:NeilN is correct about image size. Per MOS:IMAGES#Size, lead images are generally not that sizable, and never centered. A panoramic image of a city skyline is an example of when we would enlarge and center an image.

Admittedly I did not read the entire article before accepting it. I feel a little guilty in that perhaps it was not ready for the mainspace. In my defense, I was able to confirm that the subject was notable, reasonably sourced, and didn't seem to have a blatant promotional tone. Furthermore, the mainspace allows for more active collaboration, and problems with tone, referencing, etc more likely to get resolved. I suppose that is what we are seeing now, as there does seem to be some obvious problems. One thing I'm confused about is the History section, which seems to go in great detail about Justine Meritt. While we certainly want to indicate who the founder of project is, we should focus the attention toward the project itself – not the life, deep feelings and beliefs of the founder. There is some relevant detail all throughout the article, but I think puffery might be a valid concern. I recommend we work together to improve the tone while retaining this relevant material. I also hope one's arguments, including my own, are not misconstrued as quarrelsome, as I think we all are acting in good faith. — MusikAnimal ^talk 02:16, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

The article is fine being in mainspace as it meets notability and sourcing requirements. The tone and some content needs to be worked on, but that's true for hundreds of thousands of other Wikipedia articles as well. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 03:02, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

It's undoubtedly notable, but the article is written wholly from the POV of the activists. Some dispassionate, mainstream press coverage would help. Pelarmian (talk) 07:50, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Fresh Eyes, perhaps

My name is Paxus Calta (talk) 07:44, 26 June 2014 (UTC) and I am an anti-nuclear activist. I agree with the above assessment that the examples of quotes show an anti-nuclear bias. I am happy to work on them and make them and other aspects of this article more dispassionate and more encyclopedic, which in some cases it is clear will mean simply deleting information. This is a long thorough piece, and will not suffer from being cut back some.

Sources

The Wikipedia sourcing guideline Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources calls for our articles to be based on reliable, third-party, published sources. Unpublished letters are not considered to be reliable sources. Therefore material in this article sourced to letters received by Peppers and others has been removed. -- Diannaa (talk) 16:57, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed

Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: Pershing, Linda (1996). The Ribbon Around the Pentagon: Peace by Piecemakers. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press. p. 264. ISBN 0-87049-922-X. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, and according to fair use may copy sentences and phrases, provided they are included in quotation marks and referenced properly. The material may also be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Therefore such paraphrased portions must provide their source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. Diannaa (talk) 20:10, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Article Focus

Is this article about "The Ribbon International" (organization)? Or about an event? It seems to confusingly go back and forth between these two things. Hires an editor (talk) 16:30, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

I think its about the organisation, but the organisation was basically geared towards one event anyway. Also, there have seemingly been multiple problems with bias and promotion, which probably confused the situation more. Benboy00 (talk) 01:59, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Tightened up the opening paras. Needs working through like this: at present the tone is gushing. Pelarmian (talk) 08:09, 30 June 2014 (UTC)