HeartlyHear

Akaka bill

Mahalo for your edits on the Akaka Bill article. I reverted some of your changes, but encourage you to continue helping on the article. My primary concerns with your edits were neutral tone, and making uncited assertions. For example, assertions that without race-based services and programs, at-risk folk in Hawaii would not receive services is a slippery slope argument, and in your version, unattributed to anyone. Another example is your assertion that "The bill does not allow for casinos or other gaming in Hawai`i." In fact, it simply does not allow gaming "as a matter of claimed inherent authority" - whether or not gaming is allowed under other authority is not addressed.

Some of your edits would be perfectly satisfactory if the assertions were attributed to specific authors and people, so please feel free to add them back in with appropriate citation. --JereKrischel 15:22, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Aloha HeartlyHear, and thank you again for your edits on the Akaka Bill article and other Hawaii articles. I still have some concerns about many of your uncited and POV pushing edits. Could we discuss some of these in more detail before proceeding and finding a compromise? In specific, do you have any attribution that at-risk native Hawaiians in Hawaii would not receive needed government services if race-based programs were eliminated? And do you have a specific attribution for asserting that the bill would not allow for casinos or other gaming in Hawaii? (Perhaps our disagreement on that one is just a matter of time scale, and could be stated "the bill does not explicitly allow casinos or other gaming in Hawaii under Indian gaming laws").

Your kokua is much appreciated. Mahalo! --JereKrischel 15:08, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Aloha HeartlyHear, I couldn't agree with you more that these articles need more scrutiny -- your attention and perspective would be helpful and most welcome. Arjuna 19:13, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Akaka Bill Edits

All right then, I spent about 5 hours trying to balance out the article, adding links, additing material for both sides. I hope that it works more to everyone's liking! I will need to learn how to use endnotes so it's cleaner from a layout perspective.

I'm not sure whether I'm for or against the bill, but I do feel it was originally skewed toward the opponents' perspective, and I am slightly more for the bill than agains. I had started in with the editing from the top, so I only got halfway through the first few edits, that is, up through the supporters' section. But I think it would be good to hear from both sides to add to the debate.

From an English professor's and professional writer and editor's perspective, I feel that is more of an article now than bullet points. Stating the bill's objectives first made sense, before listing proponents and opponents, then going into their ongoing debate.

Must run, but hope everyone has a nice day! Ta ta! HeartlyHear 17:24, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Mahalo, HeartlyHear, but I must admit I have some significant reservations about your recent edits. In specific:

• Your characterization of "indigenous, Native Hawaiians" seems either redundant, or POV pushing. The question as to whether or not Native Hawaiians can be considered as "indigenous" to Hawaii, given the fact that they are most likely part of a second wave of colonization to the islands, and actually displaced the first people who migrated there (the Marquesans), is an open one;

• Stating that the bill has anything to do with "parity" regarding Native American and Native Alaskan tribes is blatantly misleading - none of the required qualifications for tribal recognition are in the Akaka bill -> it is well beyond "parity";

• Talking about "health, housing and economic development", and implying that if these programs weren't race based they wouldn't help people in need is misleading;

• Asserting that somehow native Hawaiian citizens of the State of Hawaii do not currently enjoy self-determination and self-governance is blatantly false -> no native Hawaiians are disenfranchised on the basis of their race in the State of Hawaii, and enjoy the same rights of self-determination that any other citizens of the State of Hawaii and the United States have;

• The 2007 version of the bill is not different at all from the last version S.147 - asserting that it clarifies anything is false;

• Asserting that support of the Akaka Bill comes from those who want to "ensure that the native (especially at-risk) population continues to receive services" is complete propaganda - those who oppose the Akaka Bill also want to ensure that at-risk populations recieve services, simply not due to their racial makeup;

• "Many Republican congressional delegates" is awfully broad and inspecific. Be more precise if you'd lke to be;

• Inoyue's quote is probably acceptable, but the assertion that treating Native Hawaiians in a manner completely different than Native Americans are treated is somehow discriminatory is failing to address the issue those people with Native American and Native Alaskan, or other pre-United States ancestry in the Americas who do not have tribal affiliation or special rights based simply on their bloodline;

I appreciate the time you're spending, but if you could address some of the issues I've raised, I'd greatly appreciate it. --JereKrischel 07:43, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Reverts

Aloha HeartlyHear. I put a comment on JK's page stating that I find his reversions highly problematic, particularly the fact that they are blanket reverts. Sorry, JK, but this approach was not at all collaborative in spirit and frankly, disrespectful. In short, with all respect to JK, I find his edits on this but the other Hawaii-related articles to be consistently unfair, unobjective, and pushing a singularly tendentious POV. HH, you will be able to see from the history of many of these pages that he and I have been in "edit wars" over these and similar issues, but I'm taking a breather from all that as I think it was getting under both of our skins, and going nowhere. I respect JK as an intelligent person though I strongly disagree with (what I, and perhaps you would agree are) his ideologically-based POV pushing. Anyhow, long story short, I thought your edits --for the large part -- were perfectly fair and appropriate. Another edit war is not very constructive, but at the same time I am asking for your help in addressing some of JK's concerns. It is quite possible that there is a permanent disconnect here, and in that case we may have to take another approach, which could be either to split the analyses/interpretations (since they may be irreconcilable) into separate sections, or to seek external informal mediation. As for JK's specific concerns, the appropriate place to address those is on the article's talk page. Mahalo. Arjuna 08:14, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

RE: Reverts

Hi Arjuna. As a professional editor, I too noticed JereKrischel's persistent reinsertion of connotative language throughout his Wikipedia contributions related to Hawai`i. I find it biased, particularly in light of the fact that he works for Grass Root (opponents of the bill) and already has a Website dedicated to defeat of the Akaka Bill. It's a good topic for a college or journalistic research project, in any case.

I agree that it would be beneficial to split the article into supporting and opposing sections. Equal time for both would be best, as long as one side's POV pushing doesn't end up in edits to the other side's. And the intro should be as other presentations on legislation and present cold hard facts without connotation or double entendre. Shall we try it that way?

As for mediation, without involvement of additional contributors on both sides of the argument, I doubt that one arbitrator can serve to everyone's satisfaction because it is difficult to be neutral in such a case.

Jere, I'm sorry I didn't have time for a point by point analysis at the time, but I will get to writing one soon. Can we agree to disagree and focus on our respective sections?

RE: the citations, there were some that I added that you edited out, such as the citation of the statistics and reports by the University of Hawai`i's Center on the Family, which shows numerically the number of at-risk children in the Hawaiian population (whether at risk socioeconomically, educationally, and/or other factors). HeartlyHear 05:30, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Mahalo HeartlyHear - my "work" for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii is negligible and purely volunteer, my title there purely honorary, and if my support of their mission of education would disqualify my contributions as being valuable, I think one could make the same statement of those who are proponents of the claims of native Hawaiian victimhood. We will all have differing points of view, but working together we can strive for a neutral presentation. I accept that you have a differing viewpoint, but I would suggest that what you see as "cold hard fact" isn't nearly as factual as you believe.

Regarding the addition of citations of "at-risk" population, it would help if it included clear indication of what kind of counting is going on (i.e., one-drop rule) for the determination of ethnicity or "race". Asserting that the Akaka Bill is predicated on that (that somehow it is a race-based remediation of poor statistics) seems a bit like original research, although if you'd like to cite someone who is making that claim, that would be a valid addition.

I look forward to working with you on making the article better! Mahalo for your kokua! --JereKrischel 06:41, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Recent edits, references, etc

Aloha HeartlyHear, a few minor suggestions:

1) The "ref" convention should be used to make citations specific, hopefully directly to the URL where you found the information. For example, instead of simply citing "Akaka, 2005", you would attribute directly to a url or other specific reference indicating a page number, etc.

2) Adding an exhaustive list of references at the bottom without using the "ref" convention doesn't help much - wikipedia is not a collection of links, and we shouldn't link to every story ever written about the akaka bill in the references section.

3) Claiming a source as a "neutral source" is open to significant debate. Best to sort by "in opposition" or "in favor", rather than making claims of neutrality.

4) Please avoid superlatives that are POV pushing...making inline editorial comments like "Bi-partisan congressional cosponsors" seem redundant - if you are indicating the group of cosponsors, they may be bi-partisan, but it seems to indicate that each individual cosponsor is somehow "bi-partisan" which isn't true. Let the "D" and "R" labels speak for themselves.

Mahalo again for your edits, if you could provide a URL for the Bennett responses, I can show you how to properly use the "ref" convention to cite it. --JereKrischel 17:43, 2 May 2007 (UTC)