Talk:Green Party

Ralph Nader is purposely not linked to from here, because he's not in (any) Green Party and he's not a representative green party politician.

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I am considering , as per the previous request to compare the two articles, removing most of this as it is 100% redundant with the new "Green Parties" entry.

the term "green Party" and the term "green party" have variant uses that are not necessarily under control of the Green Parties, and which the Green Parties in general try to deny.

I'd define a small-g "green party" (informal, colloquial), or a big-p "green Party" ( formally organized party sharing some 'green' objectives) as being one that isn't one of the Green Parties necessarily, and maybe doesn't share all the Four Pillars or all the Ten Key Values.

as in, "socialist party" or "conservative party" which are generic terms.

That has the advantage that it leaves "Green Parties" more or less presenting Green Parties as they understand and present themselves, with only a few notes of criticism and controversy, but it gives "green party" controversy unrelated to the specific big-G program a place to live... like a more historical less political perspective.

If there are objections to that approach, let me know , before I implement it.

thanks

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Someone is not reading the talk before making major changes.

The redirect needs to be undone. The article here is about generic small-g green party definition - and points to the larger and well known movement of Green Parties.

Which now (wrongly) redirects itself here.

This *REALLY PROVES* the need to have small-g "green" and big-G "Green" as different entries. dammit.

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This is getting more wrong all the time. Green Parties do not define what is a Green Party. Members of Green Parties do not define what is a Green Party. The Four Pillars do not define what is a Green Party.

"writing for the enemy", remember? A "green party" (small g) is a party that is built on environmental goals. Whether or not it also accepts the peace movement goals. If I want to discredit the Green Parties, I point to the Libertarian National Socialist Green Party, or the Marijuana Parties, and I exploit the confusion, and I fuzz the issue of the Four Pillars. So, the use of "green party" generically is real, and important, and still quite useful.

However, the Green Parties, Green Movement, and Greens (who could be either), all use that big-G Green in its proper sense.

The correct approach here is to restore the article under the title Green Parties (there is no "shorthand name" for any "group of parties" - this is wrong - there is a proposal by Green Parties to create a new international Green Party, and a GlobalGreens Charter that *some* of them agree to - two separate initiatives), and restore the article under "green party" which made the differentiation between a generally small-g "green party" compared to "socialist party" or "conservative party", and the specific Green Parties committed to the Four Pillars/ Ten Key Values.

I am *enraged* at this point at the spurious capitalization of entries, i.e. "green" versus "Green", which is literally destroying the integrity of them all.

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There is no such thing as "'small-g' Green Parties" - spurious capitalization is making this article a mess.

There is, however, such a thing as a "'small-g green party" - including the values party, ecology party, etc., that predate the modern Green Parties, and the marijuana parties, and even the LNSGP.

"Green_party" and "Green_Party" need to be restored to the generic entry that outlines the generic use, and points to the separate entry on "Green_Parties".

The second article which has been jammed into the text here is already complete, and already contains all the text of the original article, with the exception of some incorrect introduction material, such as "shorthand name"...

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24: you can't have distinct 'Green party' and 'green party' entries in the Wikipedia using the current software. You are apparently "*enraged*" by other people's attempts to clean up your mess. I'm amused that you are now issuing instructions to other authors. Hint: try playing well with others, first. The Anome

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No, it's the stupid user interface that adds spurious capitals that is the only thing enraging me. I know what a good user interface is, and one that confuses generic and Proper names is not one...

I didn't *ask* for distinct "Green party" and "green party" entries anyway, it was "green Party" that needs to be distinguished from "Green Party" in this case. The two entries are required for the use of "libertarian" vs. "Libertarian" - the equivalent for "green" is pointless as that term is too abused to use other than politically - unlike "Green" which is much more specific and almost always means "adhering to the Four Pillars"

Anyway, all that is required now is to restore the "green Party" entry I had written just prior to this one, and put the "second article" presently visible back at "Green_Parties" which properly and plurally describes the several big-G Green Parties - and *only* them.

I don't see any instructions here for undoing a diff under "editing help" so I assume it's a special function easier for some people to do than others?

Hit "History", then view your old version, edit it, then save it (I think). Then we can add this to editing help.

Or, are you all just diffing and copying when you restore? If so I'll just do it myself.

point of order: *I* didn't create the mess, whoever shoved the two articles into one did that... I'm just asking not to have the corrections stomped on...

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Hi, I think we have to watch the vibes here. Assuming your co-editors are acting in good faith helps us all a lot. It's really easy to misunderstand ASCII, so please be extra careful to try not to offend. Those were my weasel words "shorthand name" (written before the meeting in Australia, IIRC) and I'm not particularly proud of them but it would help make my world a more beautiful place if I didn't wander into random accusations. Peace, DanKeshet

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It is actually a bug that current Wiki software allows case-sensitivity in titles at all, and that is not a feature we ever intended to make use of. Such liguistic conventions are not really the focus of an encyclopedia, and will confuse readers more than enlighten them. If not using them confuses writers, well, tough. It's readers that count. Writers are presumed intelligent enough to deal with such things. And please, please, don't elevate such stylistic nuances to the level of "correctness"--such hubris certainly has no place here. If you think a change in the software would make something better for users, then discuss it with the community in the appropriate places, and we agree with might do it. But we might not; in that case, work within the software you've got. --LDC --- The convention as it stands is provably wrong. Open any dictionary or any encyclopedia. None of them assume an equivalence of Proper and generic names. Any English style guide can tell you the difference and why there is one.

Now, there's an argument that we should rely on them minimally, since other languages like Deutsch or francais use different conventions.

Software isn't the problem in this case. It's actually part of language.

As to "shorthand name", the original article was fine as far as it went, and that's why I kept all of it. It just assumed some things like the equivalence of a proto "green Party" and Four-Pillars-type "Green Parties", the universal acceptance of the GG Charter, the equivalence of 'ecology' and 'environment' (two different things), and not distinguishing ethics from platforms.

Anyway...

The crazy-making part here is that someone jams two articles together, asks for them to be reconciled when they already are, stomps on the entry that made the careful distinction, then someone else accuses *me* of making a mess...

I'll let this sit for a while so that anyone who wants to undo the mess they created can do so. If not, I'll fix it later when the people who are making the accusations aren't around, and I can be sure it won't get stomped on... tonight. ;-)

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If there's a useful (and generally recognized) distinction to be made between two related subjects, you're probably more qualified than I to make it, so please do so. But let's find something other than mere letter case to distinguish them and put them into articles with appropriate titles, with a disambiguating page pointing to them. We do our readers no service by blindly adopting such a confusing convention without explaining it in the process. Titles should be clear and easy to understand--like "Green party (generic term)" and "Green Party (organization)". Article titles begin with uppercase; no exceptions. --LDC

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That still doesn't work as "Green party" and "green party" are both generic. Sorry, the user interface convention is wrong, period, and is going to lead eventually to things like "(small-g) green party" and "(big-G) Green party" (which I've heard used as a distinction) and more reasonable stuff like "(the Four-Pillar) Green Parties". If that's what you want, that's where we go... and this is exactly where trademark law already is - 'Coke' is not 'coke' etc.

The article I had here (in "green Party") made the distinction in the first sentence and described clearly the relationship to "Green Parties" as such. The link at "green party" now does the same (although i didn't write that).

Subtle cognitive distinction here:

Asking the question "What is a Green Party?" implies a definition i.e. of a conceivable new Green Party, whereas asking "What are the Green Parties?" implies a history of some specific entities that already exist. That's very standard usage.

The "green" versus "Green" is a matter of claims, i.e. how does one *test* for "green"-ness or "Green"-ness, and there are answers to that. One could even write an article on "green versus Green" if so inclined.

But, in this user interface, that comes out "Green versus green" and doesn't make sense as it could have been "green versus green" before the GUI hacked it.

Messy.

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alright, this is done now, and "green party" redirects to "green Party" since big-P implies a formally registered political party in some jurisdiction... which I'm not satisfied the LNSGP is, but, well... who wants to annoy nazis?

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It might be messy and difficult, but it's a good writer's job to make it clear. I'm a writer--I'm very good at it, and I know how to make things clear to people and how to work within the limitations of different media. I'm going to retitle these articles--after I do, please make a genuine effort to consider that I might know what I'm doing and that it might serve your purpose to leave them titled the way I do it, or at least try to reach a community consensus before changing it. --LDC

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why don't you try to reach a community consensus *BEFORE* changing it? We just went through this, don't make us do so again.

The distinction is confusing BECAUSE THE USAGE IS CONFUSING - the job of the articles is to clear that up. If they don't, they need to be rewritten USING THE TERMS AS THEY ARE EXTANT. I have only been lectured about this ten times now...

That said, if you make it absolutely clear that "Green" means something more specific than "green", and that there are Parties that are Green but no real point inventing a fictional association of Parties that are merely green... fine. I think the titles as they stand do that fine. To be "Parties" you need two that acknowledge each other as moral equivalents... to be a Party you dont... people who don't understand that just don't understand "party".

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Why can't you just create a "green party" entry and then explain in the entry that the term capitalized has a special meaning? The two meanings are close enough together that a single article should be sufficient. Most people searching for "green party" won't know that they really should have searched for "Green Party". AxelBoldt

--- That's exactly what I did. "green party" and "green Party" end up at the same entry. It makes a point of the distinction as its first order of business, and points directly and obviously at (the Global) "Green Parties" several times.

I don't agree that "a single article should be sufficient" for three reasons:

1. the definition of (the Global) Green Parties is utterly uncontroversial... while they might sometimes disagree on policy or how to agree to agree, they don't disagree on any of their more important principles... the people who add to this article will generally be members of these parties correcting facts, updating history, etc. A tame process.

2. there are an increasing number of "fringe" green party types floating around, and (the Global) Green Parties want desperately to differentiate themselves from them. That's nice, let them do that, but to minimize the number of hacks and trolls here we should make the distinction clearly so that it doesn't fester inside any one article... let the "green Nazis" and "green stoners" and "green fascists" and such all hack "green party" with their own weird doctrine... they will... in fact it was just done today with a link to LNSGP misleadingly added as just another one of many Green Parties. Not. THe one article might have been sufficient until that started to happen....

3. There is already enough complexity in the article describing the Green Parties... if we start to differentiate them from the green parties then we are solving their problems for them. Really, this is their job to do with the public, not our job to do in essays, and the distinctions will change with context... so putting them in a scholarly article is a kind of cancer... especially if anyone can edit it...