Talk:Václav Klaus

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.
Biography Portal
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]
This article is supported by the Politics and government work group.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Czech Republic, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to the Czech Republic. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and contribute to the discussion.
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the importance scale.
Archive
Archives
Archive 1
About archives • Edit this box

I hope nobody minds that I launched a brand new talk page. The previous one imho did not meet its purpose and did not reflect the current state of the article - apart from the latest posts, that had remained untouched, though.

[edit] Bias: How to solve the issue?

I suppose the discussed article matches hardly any principles, that are to be respected while posting comments on this site. Now, it appears to be more a complaint page of the people, that strongly dislike Václav Klaus and/or any right-wing activity on the Czech political stage.

I suggest all uncited statements, assumptions and speculations be cleaned up (which would compress the article to the minimum) so that we can start adding relevant information, supported by references and cited sources, and mentioning just facts, not opinions. The articles simply must be neutral, if there is any effort present to carry out the meaning of the word "encyclopedic". It is not a proper place, where opponents of any person should spit nails and slander or, on the other hand, where backers should praise them.

In addition let me express an important note aimed namely at the Czech users: Articles on English Wikipedia are read not only by the Czechs, but also by the rest of the World, by the people who know nothing about the Czech Republic and the political situation there. This means that although you are free to air your personal complexes here, an article on a Czech president gives opinion on the whole country to a foreign reader. Do not force these unwarped people to think the Czech Republic is just a kind of "banana republic", not worth mentioning at all. It is not true, you know it. They don't. And I doubt this pack of inconsistent and biased information makes any good to them nor to any other reader.

--Black&White (talk) 01:47, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I very much agree with you. It has already came to my mind the article is biased before. That it makes a bad image (while IMHO untrue) of whole Czech Republic is a good point. -- Rikapt (talk) 09:26, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
This is an encyclopedia, not political propaganda. That goes for you as well as those who dont have the same political thought as you. EvilEuropean (talk) 09:52, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Well, exactly. This is why the article should not include bias and unreferenced facts and accusations. I tried to remove the most blatant ones while giving maximal effort to remain neutral. Hope I haven't failed totally and would welcome if others help to improve the article too - either by rewording biased sentences or providing citations. -- Rikapt (talk) 11:19, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
I have today had to revert an edit which kept in a source that I had added, but made it appear as if that source was saying something quite different than what it did. The result were sentences that were heavily anti-Klaus apparently backed up by a source. This sort of thing is, in my view, vandalism because it appears to make a source state something quite different than what it did. It's like having a sentence which says, "Travel faster than the speed of light is impossible.", attributed to Albert Einstein, then replacing the sentence with, "The Moon is made of cheese" — but leaving the Einstein attribution intact. By all means, other points of view can and should be added to the article. However, bring your own sources. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:44, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Re-election

I have tried to bring some more naturalistic English to the re-election section, but two points of fact need to be cleared up.

  • I wasn't quite sure, from the original wording, what the problem was with the the 8-9 February ballot. Seemed to be implying that it was "stolen" or something, so I've reduced the whole, biased thing to one, vague word: "problematic". At some point, we need to give greater coverage to this first ballot. From the sound of things, it probably deserves an entire paragraph of its own, where various, cited opinions could be given.
  • The allegations about the ODS "buying" or "coercing" the election really need to be cited. I've toned down the original language, but even so, it's something that needs citation.

CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 19:13, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Changes I've made to the section following the above note have mooted the point about the word "problematic". The word no longer appears in the section. However, if anyone has greater details about the balloting process, and can cite them, please include them. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 01:08, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rating article

As far as the Czech Republic Project is concerned, this article would fairly obviously be of high importance. Klaus is indispensible to any encyclopediac knowledge of the modern Czech Republic. I've placed the quality at "Start" level simply because it needs review by editors who are native speakers of English. A lot of the sentences seem to be constructed well, on first read, but in subsequent attempts, the meaning of the author isn't clear at all. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 03:03, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, Klaus is indispensable, so I promoted him to Top. Among general biographies, I'd say Mid - he's a head, but of a small state.
BTW, you might want to shorten your sig as shown above. --Malyctenar (talk) 18:04, 20 February 2008 (UTC)