Talk: Vandalism
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Not to be a humourless wad, but the "before" and "after" pictures in this article seem unnecessarily silly. Ashibaka ✎ 23:38, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
- Agreed. Although I did get a laugh of them. --Tothebarricades.tk 19:21, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
- I thought they were amusing. But they are silly. Pikpik 22:55, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
You're not welcome to characterize Wikipedia's policy on vandalism, Cunctator --LMS
- Why not? And was there actually anything biased or inappropriate in my text, or do you just dislike me? --The Cunctator
- willful wanton and malicious destruction of the property of others.
Destruction of something that is nobody's property can also constitute vandalism.
- More recent cases of Vandalism include the Taliban destruction of Buddhist statuary in Afghanistan.
Anyone's going to write about destruction of Communists statuary in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989 ? Taw
- More recent cases of Vandalism include the Taliban destruction of Buddhist statuary in Afghanistan.
Removed. It was act of propaganda not vandalism.
- Was it really propaganda? or was it anti-idolatry? I think the Taliban would say the latter. Not agreeing or condoning, but think it's important to note the difference. Personally, I'd call it vandalism, but then I like my churches elaborate....JHK
- They wanted to show everyone that they are more Muslim and Quran-following that anyone else is. That seems to be the purpose of this action. --Taw
The justification for removal is fallacious. Propaganda and vandalism need not be exclusive. One can commit an act of vandalism for purposes of propaganda, which seems to have been the case here. I propose restoring the example. --AV
I agree with that. --Seb
If any one is interested this site has a statement by a Taliban ambassador on why the statues were destroyed and although arguably the action was justified, still it remains 'vandalism' in the sense listed. Perhaps then an addition saying that vandalism is not necessarily a bad thing? Anyway here's the link:
http://www.albalagh.net/current_affairs/syed_hashmi.shtml David Byron
In order to expand this entry to something beyond just a dictionary entry (it is a little more than that, but not much) I think someone (with more knowledge then me) should write a bit about the history of vandalism and its conflicting position in society. Tag art, street art, and lots of other stuff are commonly called vandalism, but have a whole history and meaning seperate from the prejorative description. More importantly, there is a lot of data out there on the subject from Roman times to the present, and it would mean a meatier article.
I was just thinking - shouldn't the Vandalism in Ireland bit be a different page altogether. Its not relevant to the actual entry on vandalism, but is an important entry all the same. Ludraman 17:20, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I do not think the article is balanced, although I am kind of reluctant to make any changes before discussion.
The article mentions Taliban's destruction of Buddhist statues, and a specific case of "Irish vandalism" - but does not mention at all communist vandalism - the destruction of tens of thousands of churches and "czarist monuments" on Russia alone, not mentioning the same activity everywhere where communists came to power. Instead, a rather ritual destruction of several tasteless, obnoxious communist monuments is given as an example of vandalism. Many of the communist monuments in Russia are moved to museums, but most of them remain where they were. An especially disgusting case is the huge aluminum "Mother Motherland" in Kiev, that insults the ancient city - it is itself a kind of graffiti and vandalism - imagine a 300-feet tall aluminum Jesus Christ over Rome, and you'll get the picture.
Two specific cases of well publicised monument are worth noting: the demolition of Dzerzhinsky's monument in Moscow, and the demolition of Saddam's monument in Baghdad. Both are notorious torturers, and there should be some limits in preserving this kind of monuments, right? Say, someone erected a Hitler monument in Chicago in 1932; would the monument survive the WWII? Hardly.
In general, to avoid politics, I would suggest to remove any mentioning of historical monument demolitions done by governments or political forces.
Or else it would make sense to add the destruction of Dresden and Hiroshima as acts of vandalism. [[User:Vpatryshev|VPatryshev] - vpatryshev@yahoo.com
| Contents |
Basis for a future rewrite
Vandalism is an act of cultural violence, much like the raping of women. It always has justifications— if you ask the vandal: they may be religious, social, political, artistic. The justifications are interesting in themselves and all need subsections, but they don't affect the main entry. Much material has been suppressed here (see History) and needs to be more neutrally re-evaluated. Recently Wikipedia material may have been needlessly suppressed as "plagiarized," simply because it appears at Wiki mirror sites, I believe. Wetman 00:37, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)
(Needless to say, the cautious reader will be aware that it was not I who reverted this chuckleheaded article.) For a familiar denial of the descriptive assessment that vandalism is an act of cultural violence, (as is rape, in fact), see the following note of TheGrza. People who imagine a distinction between Vandalism (capitalized) and vandalism (lowercase) aren't in the habit of reading printed history or sociology. Would someone please put a disambiguating notice at the head that this entry does not concern the actual Vandals of the 5th century? An adult discussion of political-religious vandalism might begin by mentioning the defaced monuments of Akhnaten and the wave of vandalism that swept the Roman Empire in the wake of the Theodosian decrees. That's, um, a hint.19:28, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- (email to Wetman, posted here, where it is more generally useful)Any page that deals with the topic of vandalism must take into
account the other reasons beyond pointless destruction that inspire such acts. To compare them to "rapists" is ludicrious and insulting, especially to those who use it as an artform and a public forum. I appreciate that the article was possibly slanted to include this opinion, and I apologize. I always try to do my best to keep Wikipedia from containing any bias and I didn't truly cover the other side. To whitewash all vandalism as "rape" ,as you put it, shows the opposite bias.
Response to the rewrite
The article was in shambles, rambling back and forth with no real direction and including maybe the worst possible picture I have yet seen in a Wikipedia article. I agree that it was slanted toward the point of view that vandalism isn't wrong and I suppose that was me just trying to be objective and going too far. The article should not have been reverted to its originial form, however, without taking into account the work and research I have done on this page, but reshaped with your own attempt to bring objectivity to the process. As for the subsections, I do not believe that they constitute their own article because, sans Graffiti, they do not have enough information that is unique to their existence e.g. an article on vandalism in the form of "stenciling" would appear to be a stub with all reasonable information included. These other POV on vandalism should be recognized by those who may find your comparison to rape to be not only insulting, but biased and extreme, with no real connection to the work itself. As for the suppression of material, it doesn't seem to make sense in the context of this article. There was information that was taken verbatim from another webpage (NOT a mirror) and I deleted it and rewrote the information into the story in a non-plagiarized way. The only material in any way "suppressed" was the article I wrote being tossed to the winds for no other reason then the lack of willingness of Wikipedians to contribute pieces to articles rather than revert them to their former embarassing selves.
-- 10:34, Sep 19, 2004 (UTC)
But, wait! There's more...
The idea that because there has been large scale and important historical vandalism is important, and the idea of vandalism being, as you described it, "Cultural Violence" is another important idea that I agree should be in the article. My only point is that the article was nothing more than incomplete and by its incompletion biased, a regrettable situation. The article should be rewritten but with NPOV, taking into account the different types of vandalism, not just your "cultural violence". --TheGrza 22:03, Sep 19, 2004 (UTC)
- My point is simply that all entrries must begin with the historic and central meaning, in this case of vandalism' --then it may move on to modern extensions of the term. But to argue whether vandalism is cultural violence (as rape is) or not-- well, I haven't the inclination... But, as I said, it always has justifications— Wetman 08:52, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I am sorry, TheGrza
I'm sorry TheGrza - my browser was having a hard time connecting to wikipedia and I ended up doing what I didn't mean to do. Could anyone please rollback my edit? (12:22, 21 Sep 2004 62.29.254.81 (reverted changes by TheGrza)) I could put it back to TheGrza's version but I don't want to clutter the history. Thanks and please accept my apologies.
This picture probably not appropriate
Is the current picture (Graffitiforvandalismarticle.jpg) really "graffiti vandalism"? Are we positive that it's vandalism and not a work of art, drawn with permission, on the side of a building? In any case it's not a great illustration of "typical" graffiti vandalism. There were plenty of other pictures on the Melbourne site that would qualify. I'll volunteer to pick one (with the aim of showing that something was vandalized) if someone can attest that they gave permission to post other pictures from the site. Tempshill 20:48, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- Good point. A new caption is more accurate, I hope. But add examples of clear vandalism. Wetman 23:03, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- I was the one who got the picture from the folks over at Melbourne Graffiti and if you'll notice the grass at the bottom and the door on the right side of the picture, that is a warehouse. I picked that particular one because it is graffiti vandalism and it looks better then most of their other pictures.
--TheGrza 04:25, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)
Closeinch's link(s)
What do you mean the Sayville link is "Spam" That is an interesting article. In addition, there are no other links. The page that links to vandalism is appropriate relevant. It is NOT spam. (Posted by User:Closeinch2)
- That link, like the others you've been adding to various pages (such as Prostitution), is utterly worthless. Aside from being short, there are no references, no attempt at context or coherence, and contains some pretty strong allegations. It calls Teddy Roosevelt and Melissa Joan Hart vandals, the latter simply because (as a child) she "broke a thermometer and didn't tell the teacher". The images have all been ripped from other places, also unsourced, and the page (you) even state the images are not of the actual events. All of your links look to be complete bunk: I challenge anyone (other than yourself) to point out something useful in any of them. We're trying to build an encyclopedia here, not a joke rag.
- As for the link not being spam, it certainly qualifies as spam once one considers the edits under your current username, the edits under your previous username, and the edits under one of your IPs, and the edits under another one of your IPs. There's at least one other IP you've been editing under, your sole contributions being the addition of your "Sayville hisotry" links, and the insertion of questionable references: I'm also not the one reverting these (e.g., see [1]). Please understand that Wikipedia is not a vehicle for self-promotion, nor is it a repository of external links. If there's something of value in the links you're trying to insert, why not integrate that information into Wikipedia rather than link to it externally? -- Hadal 04:53, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
