Talk:Jeremy Bentham

Article name?

Is there some reason this isn't Jeremy Bentham? Howard C. Berkowitz 01:46, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Howard, I found this page as a legacy of Docmartin, with {{subpages}} on top but without template/data Metadata. As you know that gives some terrifying templates, so I decided to fill out the template/data Metadata page and to change nothing. I was tempted, though, to move the closing sentence to the talk page (and probably the Wikibox should be marked), but I resisted the temptation. --Paul Wormer 14:25, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree with your concerns. Had he actually given a citation to his work in the last sentence, it could be a reference, but the last sentence smacks of self-promotion. While I'm interested in, but not expert on, the topic, I think it would be good to have an article, but I'm very hesitant to have anything that he might criticize as his intellectual property -- although he seems to have donated it.

The text box makes me very nervous purely from a cooperative editing standpoint. I know some perfectly fine editors that use them, but I find they are very difficult to edit except when the article is approaching a final stage. I'm even cautious in using tables and multi-column formats unless I consider them necessary, but it's so easy to make a change to a colored text box and throw off the entire page that only their creator should probably change them. Howard C. Berkowitz 14:40, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I did not mean the textbox, but the templates you see when you have {{subpages}} on top and not yet a Metadata page. [After almost two years of CZ I still confuse terminology :-( ].

In the meantime I checked the WP article, the present article is completely different. If we make an ordinary citation out of the self-promotion, the article is probably OK (I'd never heard of Bentham, so I cannot judge its contents).

--Paul Wormer 16:40, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Jeremy Bentham is a major political theorist; I'd certainly not call him a philosopher alone. I'll put it on my list. Howard C. Berkowitz 19:04, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Donation

A large part of an early version of this article was taken from the entry on Bentham in 'Essentials of Philosophy and Ethics', edited by Martin Cohen, (Hodder Arnold 2006) and donated to the Citizendium by the author (i.e., Martin Cohen). (sentence moved from article to discussion by--Paul Wormer 19:00, 21 April 2009 (UTC))