User talk:Liempt

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Welcome!

Hello, Liempt, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• Tutorial
• How to edit a page
• How to write a great article
• Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome!

Paul covered most of it already, but these links WP:FORMULA and Wikipedia:List of policies and the ones above are handy for orienting yourself within the community. Drop me a line if you need anything. Cheers and good luck.—Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 08:16, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Don't feel obliged to interact with persistent vandals, that's what WP:AIV is for.

Contents 1 Welcome to WikiProject Catholicism! 2 Captalization of pronouns 3 Comments added to Altar Crucifix per your request 4 GNL 5 User Category for Discussion 6 Catholic Prayers template

[edit] Welcome to WikiProject Catholicism!

Hello, Liempt, and welcome to Wikiproject Catholicism! Thank you for your generous offer to help
contribute. I'm sure your input will be much appreciated. I hope you enjoy contributing here and being a Catholic Project Wikipedian! If you have any questions, feel free to discuss anything on the project talk page, or to leave a message on my own talk page. Please remember to sign all your comments, and be bold with your edits. Again, welcome, and happy editing! Bewareofdog 23:07, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Captalization of pronouns

Regarding your changes to Requiem, I reverted them, because Wikipedia already has a policy about capitalization: don't capitalize pronouns referring to God. Tb (talk) 19:56, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Looks ok now, though the Latin does nothing to suggest special pronouns for God. It would be better to drop archaic pronouns entirely rather than extend their use. Tb (talk) 01:11, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comments added to Altar Crucifix per your request

Hi! I've added some comments to the article, as you requested. There are issues, but don't feel overwhelmed. Rome wasn't converted to Christianity in a day!

I'm not a member of WikiProject Catholicism, so I'm not 100% certain I'm following their guidelines, but I doubt I've written anything much of out line with what they recommend.

Regards, Alpha Ralpha Boulevard (talk) 00:17, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GNL

I can't imagine why you're making such a song and dance about a widely accepted practice. Even the neo-con Bush administration avoids gender-specific language in its public statements and documents, and your stated support for the politics of the right shouldn't stop your seeing the reasons for the move to GNL and its widespread acceptance. You cast your arguments in selective and exaggerated terms (what is awkward about "firefighter"?). In any case, the issue was thoroughly and fervently debated last year, and I have no wish to go through all of that again (finally 32 for to 4 against, I think). I do hope you're not going to cause a war over it. Posting a dispute tag as soon as you raise the issue at the talk page, and writing ... rather a lot of text, some of it in long snakes of sentence, appears arrogant to me. Did you buzz the other supporters of your line to suddenly fly by to MoS? And finally, it does say "Please consider ...", not "You must ...". TONY (talk) 10:48, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Well Tony, the reason I decided to make a long "song and dance" is because I believe strongly on the issue, and I'm a mathematician. I'm accustomed to having my claims examined under scrutiny and I'm accustomed to trying to use logic, as best I can, to convince other people of my opinion. On the other hand, I'm open to people using logic to convince me of theirs. Further, as you can probably tell, I feel strongly about the issue. I honestly and completely believe that singular they is abhorrent, for all the reasons I listed in the Manual of Style's talk page article.

As for my argument, I'll say for the record that there is nothing inherently wrong with such words as "firefighter", but to my ears they sound awkward. I suppose it's because we're a product of my environment. To answer your question, no, I'll not start a war over anything. I've presented my opinion in an attempt to show the Wikipedia community how I see it; if they decide that I'm wrong, that's their right and I'll accept it as gracefully as I can. I'm a little bit surprised that you would accuse me of rallying to my supporters as I don't think I've done anything to induce that accusation. To be frank, I have no supporters and I said nothing of this except boldly putting the appropriate links in the appropriate places to get the community's opinion.

Finally, I wrote a lot of text as I expected a great deal of resistance and thought I'd set my opinion in stone beforehand, that way my whole argument would be there for all to see, and the template was simply so readers would know that text is contested. I believe (I could be wrong here) that it's standard practice for an editor to label things he finds inaccurate/in violation of NPOV/etc. . . with the appropriate template when he finds them. In any event, I'm sorry if I came off egotistical. I'm just trying to help out the project in my own way.--Liempt (talk) 11:11, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

"Firefighter" sounds just fine to me, but "fireperson" (and "chairperson") doesn't. That is why the guideline does not prescribe specific GNL, nor even the general principle, but merely says "Consider using gender-neutral language where this can be done with clarity and precision". This is the very weakest wording that you'd bother inserting into a MoS. No one is forcing anyone to do anything, let alone to use or avoid specific words or the singular they. Using the generic male pronoun for all people is really not acceptable nowadays; many people find it offensive to women, and I agree with them; this include your use of it in the paragraph above. TONY (talk) 11:27, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm interested to find out what your response is to my fourth point in the MoS page, as it deals specifically with the issue of offensiveness (See now why I wrote it all in advance?). Further, as demonstrated by my second point, whether it is offensive or not is really irrelevant to the issue. There are lots of portions of Wikipedia's policy that are offensive to lots of people, like my two specific examples on the talk page, or how it allows nude photos and so forth. My opinion is that it's only offensive because people want to believe it's offensive, as it's nothing but an inherent construct of grammar. --Liempt (talk) 11:41, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I haven't yet returned to MOS talk. I'm more concerned that our text be inclusive. It's the exclusiveness of your framing above of editors as male—specifically, the fact that some readers will see it that way, no matter how you might rationalise it—that is a good reason to avoid it. For example, why not write "it's standard practice for editors to label things they find inaccurate". See, easy, and we've saved one word. Why are you riling against this as though the sky is falling in? TONY (talk) 12:03, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, Tony, I'd like to point out that I'm not against pluralizing where appropriate so as to avoid the gendered pronoun altogether as you did on my talk page. That's not an issue to me, in fact, I condone it where appropriate (not to say one should go out of ones way to do it). My concerns are for instances where pluralizing is impractical or creates poor prose, which is to say, situations where it is far more convenient to use the singular. Further, I'm not advocating framing women as men by using male pronouns when the subject's gender is known. I'm simply saying that going out of our way to avoid offending people is not what Wikipedia should do. To me, it's censorship.

Specifically, I'm speaking out against the avoidance of perfectly legitimate words like "chairman" and also against the usage of either the awkward "he or she" or singular they. In summary, my complaint is that we're throwing away a thousand years or more of linguistic tradition just so we can advance an agenda. That seems wrong to me. --Liempt (talk) 12:19, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

• Some of us would like to throw out thousands of years of sexism, in which women have been excluded from much social and economic activity and status. They see attempts to avoid generic male pronouns as part of a necessary move to be inclusive. I agree with this, and challenge its use in articles. However, the MoS guideline you've put a dispute tag on does not force people to avoid generic male pronouns, and includes a rider about the use of clumsy language. I can't see what you're objecting to in MoS. I'd have made it much stronger, but as it is, it's merely a mild encouragement to avoid sexist language if it can be done without clumsiness. I really don't want to spend a lot of time on this all over again. Can you consult the archives, which contain a HUGE amount of debate on the matter? TONY (talk) 12:50, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, Tony, I'll do just that, and I'd like to thank you for brightening up my evening with a good debate! In any event, I'd like to get my final word in. Your last response demonstrates quite explicitly that this is a political thing. More than anything else this is what I object to. We're suggesting users go out of their way to accommodate a specific group. This occurs no where else in the project and is censorship. Anyway, I've said my spiel, and I'd love to continue arguing about this, but I'll leave you in peace for the time being. Have a good one!--Liempt (talk) 12:58, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Lots is political. The very insistence on "POV" is political in principle, and in its specific operation leads to a political angle that does not favour one opinion over another. The avoidance of original research is political. There's nothing inherently wrong in the political, and frankly, GNL is such old news that trying to make it a hot political topic is likely to result in groans from most people. TONY (talk) 13:06, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] User Category for Discussion

[edit] Catholic Prayers template

Thanks for making the Catholic Prayers template. It looks great. I was wondering if you had any ideas for a better way to categorize the prayers. Many of the prayers in the common prayers section are also indulgenced, and the template gives the impression that those common prayers are not indulgenced. Perhaps there's a better way to categorize them? Or perhaps they do not need categories at all. Regardless, I just thought I'd mention it to see if you had any ideas. Again, the template looks great and thanks for making it. Dgf32 (talk) 06:18, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Hey Dgf, I responded to your concerns on the talk page. I understand where you're coming from. I have no idea how to order them otherwise, though. I'm thinking we can either keep it the way it is and add some special formatting for the indulgence granting common prayers or perhaps organize by subject matter, location where they are said or something of that nature? In any event, it's nice to know that my work is appreciated! Cheers! --Liempt (talk) 06:28, 24 May 2008 (UTC)