User:Nema Fakei/List of republics case/Evidence

The following page is written entirely by Nema Fakei as a supplement to the evidence presented to the Request for Arbitration concerning the articles surrounding Republic and List of republics. Please comment on the talk page rather than this page.

Regarding evidence

We are fortunate that this dispute has not been accompanied by a furious edit war on the main namespace; rather, there has been a protracted battle across a number of talk pages. Since users are not in the habit of removing each other's comments, and the evidence happens to have been left relatively unscathed from being archived at this point I would suggest that most of the Arbitration Committee's questions will be answered simply by reading the pages I listed in my Request Statement.

Supplementary and Contextual evidence

This is largely a statement of my understanding of the situation. It's written a little less carefully than my contribution to the main evidence page, and is not punctuated with diffs. In particular, I abridge a lot of discussion about the book-references in question. I could write an enormous page dissecting each one, but it wouldn't have any bearing on the ArbCom decision.

Declaration of intent

The first piece of information I feel I should bring is a fuller explanation of the outstanding issues I would like the ArbCom to resolve, along with some of my thinking on the subjects. This, I feel is a context of which the ArbCom may wish to be aware when judging my contributions to the case.

Although the ArbCom does not rule on content disputes, by ruling on principles like consensus, civility and original research, it has demonstrated that it is comfortable making pronouncements on the sort of conduct through which good content can be arrived at, and it is on this that I seek clarification.

Keeping talk pages tidy

I want the Arbitration Committe to encourage editors to restrict ther comments on talk pages to discussion about to the article at hand where at all possible, without bringing in personal disputes or large cross-article wars - if there are issues that affect more than one article, they should be centralised, not cross-posted.

Helping lists out of policy limbo

"Beware of those cases in which the definitions themselves are disputed." -- WP:LIST

... I agree, but what does this mean? I ask that the Arbitration Committee make some kind of statement on the way that WP:NPOV and WP:LIST interreact with regard to inclusion criteria - or at least clarify for me the best way to develop policy on this issue. Specifically: Do inclusion criteria have to include all members of all possible interpretations of the category that's being listed? This would seem a very odd intepretation of policy, and would mean Butterflies (TV series) belongs in List_of_British_butterflies.

"Sweeping generalizations which label the subject of an article as one thing or another are inappropriate and not a substitute for adequate research regarding details of actual positions and actions which can speak for themselves." -- WP:AP/PD

As the inclusion or exclusion of items in a list is making a clear statement of fact about that item (i.e. that it belongs in the list or does not), it seems to me that lists should be clear on what membership does and does not entail, and they should accomplish this by

"unambiguous statements of membership criteria", as WP:LIST puts it.

However, I would add the caveat that they should recognise POV issues by acknowledging when there are other, vaguer definitions that the list does not attempt to cater to.

Reaffirming the role of consensus

I ask that the Arbitration Committee to make it clear that the various policies at Wikipedia are neither isolated nor in competition, but are part of a whole. Namely, I ask that ArbCom clarify the position of WP:CONSENSUS with respect to other policies such as WP:V, WP:NPOV, etc., as I'd like to know if I've understood policy correctly when I state that

"Wikipedia's policy of consensus does not override other policies, it's how those other policies work. It is through a consensus that phrasing is accepted as NPOV, it is by consensus that we judge whether references are relevant and useful where there is uncertainty." [1]

Issuing specific remedies

I understand it is also the Arbitration committee's custom to issue remedies specific to users and situations. I am not (at the time of writing) sure what is the best course of action, but I do have an idea of the issues I feel the ArbCom should be tackling. These are:

• Incivility on talk pages - it must end. I'm sick of the childish insults, the arrogant caps, the ugly underlines.
• Editors must be prepared to engage with each other and with the content of the article.
• Some solution must be found to this issue of novel interpretation of sources. They're dangerous, because they appear to be quite innocent references when they can be used to legitimise untrue statements; they're protected by this feeling that a reference *must not* be removed.

As these are clearly not new problems, the remedies need to have some sort of lasting effect. Ideally, they'd also have no adverse implications on the potential for editors to make good contributions.

Declaration of POV

Secondly, I feel I should make clear my personal view of the issues at hand, and thus the perspective I work from, again, in order that the Arbitration Committee can take these into account where necessary.

• In "Real Life", I am a far-left democratic socialist, I'm from Britain, and I oppose patriarchy, monarchy, aristocracy, and similar authoritarianism out of both principle and pragmatism. I declare these in particular as they've been brought up by WHEELER [2]. To be frank, I don't think they're that much of a factor, as I find the issue at hand to be largely one of semantics, sources, and WP policy interpretations.
• I hold that the word res publica originally had the meaning of "state of the people", was created in contrast with the monarchy of the Tarquins, and that while was then extended to include meanings like "The Roman State" as it existed at the time of a given speaker, the basic meaning was never truly lost. I also hold that this is accepted by the vast majority of classical philologists - if not every single one.
• I also do not believe that res publica - or, for that matter, republic - ever had "mixed government" as part of its core declarative meaning. At most, I see a number of places in which notable authors argue in favour of a "mixed government" and are willing to use the word republic to describe their ideal government, but the only person I can see who wants to argue that the word republic implies "mixed government" is WHEELER.
• My stance on the issue at List of Republics is currently that the list should essentially just comprise self-declared republics: [3] (note, this is very much distinct from what WHEELER terms "Machiavellian" or "British Republicanism"), as I believe this is the only way to avoid permanent inconsistency and controversy.
• This despite the fact that I place little to no actual value on the de jure and nominal constitutional categorisation of countries; political reality is generally far removed from idealistic or theoretical constitutional declarations, in my opinion. I just think that WP lists aren't capable of making those sorts of distinctions, and that a list of countries that call themselves 'Republic' would be a better tool.

My understanding of others' POV

Again, I'm not asking for ruling on this (even if ArbCom ruled on content disputes, the actual issue at stake is a fairly trivial one!), I'm just giving some context for ArbCom to refer to so they can follow the debate more easily. WHEELER's case seems to go something like this:

• Sparta was a "mixed government".
• The word "Republic" originally meant "mixed government".
• Sparta should be included in the List of republics

And/or

• The phrase res publica was used by Cicero and perhaps a few others of Sparta.
• Sparta should be included in the List of republics

MY objections go something like this: I agree with his first point (and consider it well-referenced), disagree strongly with his second (and consider it OR), and therefore am unable to support his third. His fourth I believe to be irrelevant, as the word has a range of meanings of which the specific constitutional sense seems the least useful in the contexts in which Cicero uses the phrase. WHEELER's references largely support point one, but, despite what he claims, go no further. He also cites the odd author (Rahe, I believe) who uses republic to refer to Sparta, though again, I suspect they largely use it in the same casual sense as Cicero.

In any case, my stance is that the list criteria alone should define entry to a list, and I'm currently of the opinion that the only workable definition in this case is that of self-definition, as making judgements about the political reality behind individual states is too fraught with POV problems for a list entry to deal with.