Talk:Che Guevara/Archive 1

To Do List
(add items that need to be addressed with the article, delete from list when complete) RedThoreau 23:42, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Remove duplicate quotes under images from text


 * PLEASE NOTE: It has been a standard practice on Wikiquote to include original language quotes, as well as translations, especially on passages where accuracy is disputed, and the use of SUBJECT headings and footnotes are DISCOURAGED here. I have not time to go into more details right now, but am posting this brief comment. Please familiarize yourself with our formatting standards before doing drastic revisions to pages. ~ Kalki 22:40, 16 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I also wish to note that as this is Wikiquote and not Wikipedia, the images are usually used in conjunctions with quotations, and if not used as an introductory quotation, preferably somewhere near their placement in the body text, rather than with captions describing the images. ~ Kalki 22:51, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Kalki ?
Do you have a link where it describes these "standard practices"? It is hard to believe that you wouldn't utilize source notes, randomly bold certain quotes with no rationale, would list quotes twice (under pics and in the text), would have large gaps in-between quotes as a result of picture placement, would have scores of unreferenced quotes etc. I find these issues to disappointing and unprofessional for a "Wiki" endeavor. RedThoreau 23:48, 16 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Bolding for emphasis of famous or significant portions of statements has been discussed many times, and has been retained as an option available from the earliest days of the wiki. I have commented upon it on several occasions to those who do object to it, but now just usually point out some of the past discussions when the subject comes up. I am in an EXTREMELY BUSY period with other things right now and currently don't have time to converse on matters here a great deal. I have to devote most my time to several other major concerns within the next few days and probably won't have time to do all I would like on these matters, and will likely have very little time to spend on this project for at least a few weeks. You reverted my resotration of the previous state of Che Guevara, with a few minor revisions, to that of one with your massive revisions, with the comment "restoring page - I didn't do all that work for you to revert it all" — I did see that that you had made some useful additions, but you worked for about an hour, with many suppositions of how things should be arranged, and without familiarity or regard with some of the standard practices and guidelines which have developed here, upon a page many people have worked on and off for years, and I simply didn't have time to sort through all your major changes and retain all of the useful ones that may have occurred. I am aware there are many deficiencies to that and many other pages, but we have a very few regular editors taking care of thousands of pages, and there is simply not time for the few of us to perfect them all.  Source citations are provided interlinear fashion as is standard on many published quotation references, rather than in footnote fashion. Your help at sourcing unreferenced quotes would be appreciated, but we have sections for "sourced" and "unsourced" quotes on nearly all pages, as well as "Misattributed" sections for widely misattributed quotes. We have discouraged the use of subject sections on pages for people for some time, though there are still many pages which have begun to use them abundantly, but this contrary to standard practice.  I am in a rush right now, as I will be leaving within the next hour, have many things to do, and will be gone for several more before I can check on anything further here at all. I will simply post a "welcome" message on your talk page for some of the standard guideline links. I don't have time to fully converse on everything right now. There might be some typos in this, as I have typed it rather fast, but I don't have time to check it fully right now. I will check back on things later. ~ Kalki 00:37, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Quote Brackets
I would like to see quote brackets used, as I believe it makes reading the quotes much easier. If you notice I have begun converting these quotes to - This bracket Quote RedThoreau 01:10, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Just a note that this non-standing formatting suggestion was rejected. These tweaks can look good on some Wikipedia pages but would be excessive on pages here. ~ Kalki (talk &middot; contributions) 11:05, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Inclusion and then Trim
Right now I am going through his famous speeches, writings, books on him etc, and attempting to organize the quotes by source. This may take the weekend (or more time) but I believe that everyone will see a greatly improved final result. I am also going to include a larger number of quotes now ... and then trim them later based on notoriety/concensus (if anyone else joins in). RedThoreau 03:26, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I have broken down the sections by source and reference, which will now make it easier to list them as sourced. RedThoreau 04:19, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Please Allow Me A Few Days
To continue my large scale revamping of the article. If at weekends end, editors are unhappy with the new version, then we can revert. However, I believe that the new version will constitute one of the most complete articles on all of Wikiquote. RedThoreau 08:07, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

I am not going to interfere with things on this page right now, because I simply don't have the time, but I will make a few remarks.

I can agree that the quotation mark icons look good, and that they are well employed on Wikipedia pages for the occasional quote, but they have been suggested here before, and I objected to them becase they are not necessary here, especially on the longer pages, impose a higher graphics burden on the pages without adding any significant information, and probably impose a heavier learning curve on new editors who aren't experienced Wikipedians.

I actually don't think it is a bad idea to allow people to experiment and improvise with the formatting of pages, especially new ones they create, and perhaps even maintain a few pages with slightly different formatting than normal, if the general group consensus agrees that it should be permitted. I still really don't think the quote mark icons should be used here as a standard practice on pages, despite their cosmetic attractiveness, though I have considered using them on the main page for the Quote of the day. The other formatting improvisations you have made also look good, but I prefer retaining the standard citation forms which have been established rather than making a call to revise the formatting of over 15000 pages with the handful of already overburdened regular editors which we have here.

I believe the Argentine flag icon also looks okay, but such marks aren't used on the Wikipedia article and there are already enough contentions about the "actual nationality" of famous figures like Einstein, Tesla, and such, without introducing further contentions about which flags of which nations, from what era, should be used in connection with them.

Though always recognizing the importance of graphics, for several reasons I originally objected to the use of them here before the Wikimedia Commons was established, but now that it has, I add them abundantly on many of the pages which I have time to work on, to make the pages more visually interesting, provide better visual cues for finding significant statements, and to better emphasize a few of them. As you probably noticed, having images on the left interferes with the standard formatting of quotes and their citations here, and I believe that a having all the images on the right on most pages works okay.

I also remain an advocate of bolding many of the more famous or significant statements, especially those within longer quotations, and believe this simply extends on the useful presentation of quotations which we are all involved in here.

I expect to be very busy with other things for at least several weeks, and I know that I have to complete several of the major time-consuming tasks on my agenda in the next couple of days, so I won't have time for much discussion here for at least a few days, but if there is to be debate about major changes to the basic formatting of this and/or other wikipedia pages it should probably occur on the village pump for at least a couple of weeks. ~ Kalki 12:34, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Restored normal formatting to this page
The one most obvious improvement made in the recent edits by Redthoreau was the return, once again, of the iconic photograph used at the top, which seems at last to have become accepted at the commons after it had several times been deleted as a suspected copyright violation. Hopefully this will now remain as previous objections to it seem to have been sufficiently answered in his posting of it there in April, and for that he does deserve credit and thanks. He also sourced a few of the quotes which were unsourced, and added new quotes. Many of the other changes are for the most part much more objectionable.

Other than the improvements mentioned above which I have retained in my recent edits, the changes which had recently been made seem to consist of enlarging the famous iconic photo of Che at the top, moving a few images to the left rather than the right, removing the captions which had existed from every image, removing numerous quotations, including almost all of the original spanish ones, removing many dates from source citations, and ignoring the standard bulleted formatting of nearly every other page at wikiquote in favor of using templates for having graphic quotation symbols on every quote. Most of those formatting changes and deletions have now been reverted.

Though addressing the changes made to this page remained on a list of things to do since the changes were first made, it was not a top priority for me to even closely examine them, and I simply had neither enough time nor interest until recently to begin to make the somewhat complicated and tedious edits that it took to restore deleted quotes and information, remove much of the new formatting, and NOT remove most of the new material which was added, as a straight revert would have done.

Though I remain interested in allowing any genuinely new formatting ideas to be suggested, I am not interested in simple repetition of already tried and rejected ideas, and certainly not when it also seems to have provided a confusing cover for the deletion of many quotes and a few links. I had indicated early on that the idea of entirely replacing the normal bulleted format with one of the more highly graphic intensive wikipedia quotation block formats actually had been suggested and rejected on other pages before. Such a format can make much sense on a few quotes on a wikipedia page — but it really does NOT for every quote on an entire Wikiquote page.

I also objected to the use of national flag icons to indicate nationality of persons, as both an unnecessary and potentially very contentious precedent, which could create battlegrounds of unneeded nationalistic icons on many pages, and this seems to be much of the case against their use at Wikipedia as well, despite some persisting efforts to include them.

In the future I believe I will strongly recommend that anyone interested in doing radically different format experimentation do it on a page they actually create, and not on a very large long-standing one, where the complicated edits that are made make it a tedious process to extricate new material they gradually added from whatever formatting changes and deletions which they also make.

I have also removed the rather heavily POV inflected intro that had been added, in favor of one slightly adapted from the one which exists at Wikipedia. Che's capture was certainly assisted by CIA information and involvement, and his execution may or may not have been recommended by some agents of the CIA, but to say it was a "CIA assisted execution" is factually inaccurate POV. It doesn't usually take all that much to kill an already captured man.

I also restored the standard "unsourced" section to the page, sourced a few of the quotes which were in it, deleted one link to a forum page, restored several non commercial links to archives and essays which had been removed, and moved the link for the highly commercialized "Che-Lives.com" from the top spot, where it had been very improperly placed, to the bottom of a section, as it certainly is not an "official" site, nor even primarily an information source, though it does provide some informational material, and therefore has been retained.

I have spent many hours over much of the last week completing the restoration of quotes and normal formatting, and then sourcing some of the unsourced quotes which had simply been removed, and adding a few new images and quotes. I might possibly do a bit more work on this within a few weeks, but will more likely concentrate what time I have available on much needed work on other pages. ~ Kalki 14:34, 19 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Although I appreciate your work and edits as well ... I have reverted all my work that you recently reverted. You speak here on the talk page like you are the "sole" authority on how a page should look, what should be included etc. I have no desire for an edit war, and am willing to compromise on anything with the page. However, I strongly disagree with your removal of my tedious work to go through and source ALL Quotes included on the page, and put them in chronological order. An unsourced quote is worthless in my opinion (which I guess you obviously disagree on). Now I did not view the July 14 of this page as a final version (rather one in progress, where unsourced, Spanish quotes etc could still be added on) – Thus I believe it would be better for you to "add" onto my already fully sourced version, rather than to revert the countless hours of painstakingly investigation I conducted to find where the majority of those unsourced quotes came from. Furthermore, I had listed the quotes in chronological order, which I deem important to understanding the context in which they were made. I also had the quotes listed in their appropriate context (the speeches they were given). Randomly pulling unsourced quotes from thin air, with no surrounding contextual information, to me is extremely un-encyclopedic. I understand that you may just revert me back as well, and if that's the case I won't revert again - however I do hope that you will be willing to at least attempt to mesh our differing views on how to compile the page, as I am.RedThoreau 15:34, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Frankly, I find it hard to believe you appreciate my work and edits much at all, nor anyone else's work on the page and formats used on wikiquote, and I am simply asserting guidelines on formatting that have been used FOR YEARS and representing styles developed or retained by consensus FOR YEARS, and you are a relative newcomer who has behaved from the start of your editing as if you "are the 'sole' authority on how a page should look, what should be included etc." Your statement that you strongly disagree with my removal of your "tedious work to go through and source ALL Quotes included on the page, and put them in chronological order" simply amounts to a mention of your willingness to remove ALL unsourced quotes, or quotes you yourself did not bother to source from the page. 'I DID source a few more of those which had been in the unsourced section which you had not, which indicates you probably could'' have done the same, if you'd been willing to do so. I also restored many SOURCED quotes and many dated citations which you simply removed.' I do NOT know of any quotes I actually removed which you had added, as I don't recall having deliberately removed any, but if there were any I accidentally'' deleted in my own tedious work to RESTORE many things, I am quite willing to have them restored as well. I acknowledge you did much work, but to speak as if you did the most work on this page, or as if your edits were the primary ones, or entirely constructive rather than to a great extent DESTRUCTIVE and exclusionary, and with an apparent effort to censor and remove much material which had been on the page, is to make assertions which are simply false. I provided a very detailed and honest summation of the edits I made in a tedious process of RESTORING quotes which had been present on the page for years, and formats used on nearly all the other pages since the project began, and not a "let me do whatever I want for a few days and I'll bet you like it better" comment. I'd been to busy to deal with the issue much when the edits began, and remain very busy, but as I think should be clear, I did not like it better, and I think the majority of regular editors here would agree. In a couple brief efforts prior to this week's I'd found the task of restoration too tedious to complete in a short time (without a simple revert, such as I was able to do on your last edit, which had simply ignored all my work and additions), and finally finished it after much work throughout the course of the last week. If anyone believes that the restoration of the quotes, captions, links, and standard bullet format, as well as the few image and quote additions I made should be objected to, I don't believe that there is a very strong case for it. ~ Kalki 17:49, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I have just done a little more sourcing of the unsourced quotes, and wish to note that while it is immensely preferable to source all quotes, we have always had sections for unsourced quotes here, as there are often statements which are widely quoted which we should acknowledge, and gradually seek to properly source, or show to be certainly or probably misattributted. I stated in my notes above that I don't recall deliberately removing any of your additions, but I know that I did move some quotes which had been improperly sourced to the misattributed section, which does indicate that even sourced quotes can be mistakenly sourced. ~ Kalki 18:55, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Let's try this again :o)
Kalki, I find it unfortunate that you may have taken in my view an "needlessly aggressive" tone, but I also acknowledge that you may have viewed my edits as such as well. Thus I am going to attempt to start this conversation over. At the outset, I apologize if you feel that I was devaluing your contributions (that was not my intention) although I acknowledge that you could have rightfully viewed my edits as such. I also had a desire to continue work on the page and re-include many of the quotes which you restored as well, but had unfortunately gotten bogged down recently, and thus I realize that in your view you could have perceived the current product as my completed effort - which it was not. I am not going to revert you again, and I have no desire for an edit war, nor a hostile editing relationship. Here are some of my concerns with the article at present, and I will number them so you can respond to them if you wish.

(1) Random and arbitrary bolding. I consider myself very well versed on all the statements by Che Guevara and his life, and find it hard to decipher a potential rationale for why certain phrases are bolded and others are not. What is your rationale for these decisions? (2) Quotes under pictures. When the quote is under an image, it does not list its source with it - which I feel all quotes should. Also are these not double listed - listed once in the body and again under the pictures? Wouldn't it be better to list these quotes one time only? (3) Out of chronological order. Like any human being Guevara's opinions on the world, revolution, economics etc adapted and were transformed over time and with his experiences. Thus I find it more complete of an endeavor to list these in chronological order, so that a reader can gain knowledge of his evolving philosophical thought and personal remunerations. Do you disagree with this? And if so why? (4) Image placement. At present the way they are placed leaves large giant blank spaces in certain sections. Hence why I had previously placed them to prevent this. Do you not find these large blank gaps unacceptable? Do you not find this placement troublesome and unprofessional? (5) Variant translations of insignificant difference. Is it necessary to list an entire paragraph quote again to offer an alternative translation with a word or two difference, which for all intents and purposes does not change the inherent meaning of the quote? When translating from Spanish there will inevitable be slight differences in literal interpretation. - Lastly, I want to thank you for the work you have done on the page and formally acknowledge your efforts which I do appreciate. I hope to work with you in the future and combine both of our efforts to create as good a page as possible. Furthermore, I appreciate your reply to these issues, should you address them. RedThoreau 19:06, 20 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I might not have time to respond much more here today, but briefly addressing a few of your statements on:


 * (1) Random and arbitrary bolding.
 * The option of bolding key statements or some of the more famous or notable passages within a large quotation is one I have promoted since the earliest days of Wikiquote, and though some use of it on some pages might arguably be considered "arbitrary" or excessive, I continue to believe it to be a useful extension of the selection processes we are all engaged in even when we add quotes. I have responded to objections to it in the past, but now when the matter comes up I usually provide links to some of my past discussions, such as I made a couple years ago at User_talk:Kalki/2006, and a few other places, rather than continuously repeating the points made.


 * (2) Quotes under pictures.
 * Adding captions with selected quotes to images is hardly an idea original to Wikiquote, and are used in many magazines and books. I don't believe that quotes used within captions need to be sourced in the captions, nor need to be presented only once on the page. Aside from an image or two at the top of a page, I believe the images should be placed in the vicinity of the quote used for its caption, and making these quotes easier to find or notice, especially on large pages is one of the useful functions of images.


 * (3) Out of chronological order.
 * There can be occasional errors made, especially when editing large pages, but I certainly have no objection to maintaining chronological order. Standard guidelines on Wikiquote have long promoted chronological order for individual quotes, according to creation dates or the published sources available, and then chronological order of sections for specific sources with many quotes, preferably with a sequential presentation of quotes within those. I certainly do not feel there should be a seperate section created for every available source of quotes, but that sections should usually only be created when there are several quotes from a single source. Your previous edits also simply removed many fully or partially sourced quotes which you did not create separate sections for.
 * One exception to chronological order on pages for people is in the "Quotes about" sections of articles where it is usually much simpler to provide an alphabetical-by-author listing of quotes.


 * (4) Image placement.
 * There are usually a wide variety of options for image placement, but as I stated, I feel they should be used with captions for the presentation of quotes, and usually placed in the general vicinity of where the quote appears on the page. This can sometimes create some aesthetically displeasing gaps where no images have yet been used, but I don't believe that simply using images without quotes is preferable or all that useful. Though I am aware that some images on some pages do not have captions with quotes, I do believe that most eventually should.


 * (5) Variant translations of insignificant difference.
 * I do believe it is appropriate to use variant translations when they are available, but I agree that many of these on this particular page are rather slight, and might originate in different editions of the same work. One reason for providing them is that people might be searching the internet for one of the variants available, and not find it, nor the other variants available here.


 * I acknowledge I can sometimes be rather harsh in some of my assertions, but I would assert there was some harshness appropriate, as you had clearly removed much material, wrongly claimed I was doing so, and seemed to be agressively disregarding many long established guidelines here. I myself am very averse to creating any absolute rules which I don't consider absolutely necessary about anything, and thus have seldom been involved in creating any mandatory ones here, but I do believe in maintaining certain established practices until clearly better ones become available, and which most people involved can accept or agree to. I am not at all hostile to any of the actual additions you made or to further additions you might wish to make, but do at this point remain hostile to any major formatting changes. ~ Kalki 21:23, 20 July 2008 (UTC)