Talk:Transparency (behavior)

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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Octopus's garden.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 11:40, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Style

the article reads as if it were written by a 5-year old. many parts are either redundant or confusing. furthermore, there seem to be no references on this page, which makes the article look like original research. --141.35.179.94 15:47, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd have to pretty much agree with the above statement, some work is needed.--66.82.9.85 (talk) 23:34, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I concur that this article needs a primary author to bring together the various points in it and clean it up. I would also recommend for some possible citations and material going to the Kaufmann, Kraay, and Mastruzzi (1998-2008) publications on "Governance Matters" and material from Transparency International. The article also fails to discuss corporate transparency sufficiently, a topic of great interest to advocacy groups and stockholders. DwatsonII (talk) 18:57, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, some separate articles about it, Radical transparency, Open government, Corporate transparency. Mion (talk) 09:58, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Still needs some cleaning up (NPOV), and a few refs. Cheers Mion (talk) 10:58, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Transparency in USA

President Bush is a member of the secret society Skull and Bones. The main problem with skull and bones is that it is a closed secret society. Therefore one can only speculate about that for which they stand. The symbol they use has been used in the past by pirates (theives). This does not enhance their image. They are so secretive that even presidential candidates give their allegence to the society before the american people; therefore they will not discuss what they society stands for or what ideologies they embody.

Our country makes a big deal about being an open, transparant society, but how open and transparent can it be, if our leaders pledge their allegence to secret societies?

BmikeSci 07:41, 7 July 2006 (UTC)BMIKESCI

Tranparency in the EU

The Philippines is not a liberal democracy.

It strikes me that the Transparency in the EU section of this peice is first of all POV and second of all would be better placed on the European Union article rather then the Transparency article. I would like to hear what others think. Jboday

I absolutely agree. Transparency at the EU certainly is an issue that would easily fill an article on its own, but of course it is very complex, and should encompass much more information, than just a political opposition to the EU constitution. Regards Olivia Summer

Neutrality?

Article appears to make various subjective judgments about the issue of transparency, i.e. how it affects the significance of elections and democracy. --Wykypydya (talk) 05:46, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

This is so bad that it either needs to be completely rewritten or deleted. Ehusman (talk) 01:42, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree. This sort of sentence: "The elections and referendums are no longer the prime or only way for the people to rule itself" is an example of abstract and collectivistic gibberish. How can "people" rule "itself"?--67.142.130.47 (talk) 18:04, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

move opposed

I oppose the move from Transparency (humanities) to Transparency (research), as the article is about humanities, maybe we need an article about transparency in research but that is a different thing. Cheers Mion (talk) 19:53, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, if I were to replace

Transparency, as used in the humanities, implies openness, communication, and accountability 

by

Transparency, as used in the sciences, implies openness, communication, and accountability ,

I would see nothing wrong with that, except for the possible addition of reproducibility, which is not equally achievable in different disciplines. This would lead to

Transparency, as used in scholarly research, implies openness, communication, and accountability

which I still think is a valid way to put it. So I would rather keep the article at research and rephrase it such that it includes fields outside the humanities. Mietchen (talk) 10:07, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

The idea is good, but why not make a seperate article about transparency in research, the original article is about humanities, ? or expand a section on research, Cheers. Mion (talk) 12:33, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I still do not see how this article is more on humanities than sciences but thinking again about renaming, Transparency (politics) (which actually redirects to humanities and now to research) might be appropriate, and some science or research-related paragraph could then be added, e.g. under a science policy heading. I simply lack the time to start a good article on the research-specific aspects in the near future. Mietchen (talk) 15:22, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I added sections, i hope this makes the umbrella phrase more visible. Cheers Mion (talk) 10:35, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm, that's better but the current labeling still excludes the sciences. What about Social transparency then? Mietchen (talk) 14:51, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Science isn't a human activity ? so why is it excluded ? i agree on the point that the science part is easy to expand. Cheers Mion (talk) 15:52, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

It certainly is. My point, though, is that the article's title is not Transparency (human activity). The normal usage of humanities simply does not include science. All the activities listed in the article so far pertain to some social interactions that are made "visible" to members of the society who were not directly involved in the interaction. This crucial social aspect cannot be reflected in Transparency (humanities) (nor in Transparency (research) and only vaguely in Transparency (politics), for that matter) but it can in something like Transparency (social) or Social transparency. -- Mietchen (talk) 13:58, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Ok, if thats the point, move Science out to its own article if it has enough content, the other sections fit perfectly in Transparency (humanities). Cheers. Mion (talk) 17:19, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Transparency (science) may eventually get its own article but the kind of transparency discussed in the current version of the article is broader than that (and broader than Transparency (humanities) or Transparency (research)) and encompassed a number of social activities that humans engage in, including research in the humanities and sciences (another one not mentioned yet but probably worth including would be sports). I have thus replaced as used in the humanities in the intro by when used in a social context, and replaced the mentions of science below by research and academic as umbrella terms encompassing both humanities and sciences. This makes the article ready, in my eyes at least, for being moved to Transparency (social). -- Mietchen (talk) 15:09, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

yes, i agree, it encompasses a number of items including science en sports, but i think by putting the article under social the false statement would be made that transparency in these fields only apply to social activities, which is not the case, it also applies to other fields. So I think it should be moved back to its former name. Mion (talk) 23:53, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I notice there might be a mismatch in our uses of the term social. Taking the uses currently listed at social and numbering them, we get

1. attitudes, orientations or behaviours which take the interests, intentions or needs of other people into account (in contrast to anti-social behaviour);
2. common characteristics of people or descriptions of collectivities (social facts);
3. relations between people (social relations) generally, or particular associations among people;
4. interactions between people (social action);
5. membership of a group of people or inclusion or belonging to a community of people;
6. co-operation or co-operative characteristics between people;
7. relations of (mutual) dependence;
8. the public sector ("social sector") or the need for governance for the good of all, contrasted with the private sector;
9. in existentialist and postmodernist thought, relationships between the Self and the Other;
10. interactive systems in communities of animal or insect populations, or any living organisms.

You seem to be using it in roughly the first three senses which do not fit well with the current focus of the article but I am using it here primarily in the broader senses of 4, 5 and 8 (and 6 & 7 to some extent) which all match well with the focus of the article, suggesting Transparency (social) as appropriate. Humanities represents just a tiny fraction of this meaning of social, and Transparency (humanities) is therefore not an appropriate label for this article. -- Mietchen (talk) 16:09, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

I think the difference is the approach where you take the social approach as an interaction between animals, in corporate structures, management, media, banking it is about the transparency of the system or actions within that system as in a economic system, tagging them as social as in The Transparent Society is a false statement to the reader of the article. That would cover item 1-4, about 6 Research, is that a social activity ? in general its a commercial activity, nothing social about it, leaving politics, that section needs actually expanding. Mion (talk) 02:35, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

The above list makes it clear that the term "social" may refer to interactions at the level of individuals or at that of some subdivisions of society. A transparency in the sense of this page would apply to the latter kind, i.e. basically the uses 4-8, which can thus properly be described as Transparency (social4-8), or Transparency (social) for short (as long as there is no Transparency (social1-3,9-10) that would conflict with that, and apart from fiction of the The Transparent Society type, no such entry seems to be on the horizon). Research (onderzoek) is a social activity in the sense that it is normally a process involving interactions between different people (e.g. members of the research group), quite often not in a corporate setting (e.g. in academia). --Mietchen (talk) 16:29, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Proposal: how about Transparency (humanities and science) ? or would you like to move Science to its own page ? Mion (talk) 20:00, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Glad you come up with alternative suggestions, too. However, "humanities and science" (geestes- en natuurwetenschappen) both pertain to wetenschap (this was roughly the sense I had in mind when moving from Transparency (humanities) to the current Transparency (research)), and their use in the name for this page would, like Transparency (research), exclude most of the non-academic examples you gave above (e.g. corporate management, banking or the media). Furthermore, "humanities and science", would, within academia, exclude social sciences (which are often but not always lumped together with the humanities) and engineering fields (which are often but not always lumped together with science). So Transparency (humanities and science) would still be too narrow for this page.--Mietchen (talk) 16:29, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, it depends who we follow, the narrow approach (classic) makes a split, however when it comes to globalisation, then politics, management, technology and banking are included, see "Humanities research addresses complex fields such as health and disease, cognitive science, globalisation and integration, and the impact of technological " [www.esf.org/research-areas/humanities.html] so the global option is also available. Mion (talk) 18:18, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

I entirely agree that humanities research covers the aspects you mention (e.g. banking) but still it does not cover physics and such, and so I moved the article to its current position at Transparency (research) because this encompasses research in both the humanities and other academic disciplines. However, you opposed this move, and the only reason I see which may support this opposition is that research in this academic sense may still be too narrow a description (Transparency International are rarely concerned with such research, although they do investigate a lot; similarly, most of banking is not research in the sense of your ESF quote). I agree, and I thus suggested to use Transparency (social) (or Social transparency), since this is a term which has such a broad meaning (along with a number of more narrow ones that are possible but rarely used) that it encompasses all the transparencies listed in the article so far. But we are moving in circles here, and perhaps need some arbitration from somebody familiar with the concepts behind transparency, humanities, research, and social. I, for one, have never engaged in such a long debate about a page title, and will stop here now because this keeps me away from things I deem more important. I wish to add, however, that I found similar discussions over at Citizendium to be more productive. --Mietchen (talk) 10:34, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

To make it more productive (and I agree that research is different item), I tried to move the section Research to its own page Transparency (research), a shortcut would be to cut/paste the rest into Transparency (humanities), however the full page history is now on Transparency (research), so by deleting the redirect, moving this page to Transparency (humanities), then split out the section to Research to Transparency (research) and do some rewriting , all would be in place, agreed ? Mion (talk) 11:53, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

The proposed result can be seen on Transparency (humanities) and Transparency (research) without the page history, i placed your rewrite on the research intro back as you intended, the see also needs a clean out. Cheers Mion (talk) 12:14, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, you got me back again, since SoWhy explicitly asked for my approval of moving the page back to Transparency (humanities). So I will give another brief summary:

1. The former title of the page was Transparency (humanities), which I found too narrow when wishing to link to it from Open Notebook Science, and so I moved it to Transparency (research), which encompasses Transparency (humanities) and Transparency (science), along with transparencies of further academic disciplines.
2. The concept described in the current version (as of writing these comments; there was an edit conflict here and further changes there; I had other things to do in between) of this article is, outside WP, known as Social transparency and could well be termed Transparency (social) here, with a redirect either way. This encompasses Transparency (research), Transparency (media), Transparency (management), Transparency (politics), Transparency (sports), and others which may or may not have their own WP articles (yet).

Having said this, I do not "agree that research is the problem in the story". I thus oppose

1. The return of the current article to its previous home at Transparency (humanities),
2. The removal of the research section therein (because, in the sense of transparency discussed there, research is no different than banking or media).

@Mion: I see that you try to do your best to keep the article from being mislabeled. So do I. What I meant by higher productivity on such issues at CZ is that there are usually experts around that are well aware of the different facets of some particular phrasing, and quick in providing alternative solutions (often ones that the original discussants themselves did not come up with, but happily consent to). If I could have found some information on your expertise concerning transparency, humanities, research, and social, I might have found ways to address your concerns better.

@SoWhy: I will not engage in edit warring - that's not my style of collaborative editing. --Mietchen (talk) 12:52, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Apologies if it sounded as if I thought you do. I meant that there is always a possibility that someone does in such cases. As I said on my talk page, I strongly suggest one of you starts a request for comment on this topic to get more community input. Regards SoWhy 13:55, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Now, say I follow the lead to Social transparency to encompass the issue, it states here[1] that there is a tendency in Corporate transparency to move attention from transparency in accounting to Social transparency which makes it two different entities, where, a second lead on a description of Social transparency is "WikiDashboard: Providing social transparency to Wikipedia"[wikidashboard.parc.com/], so, my request is that you start the article Social transparency with some refs for a better understanding of you proposel about social attribution before we merge other content to that page. Mion (talk) 14:35, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Third opinion

I have read this discussion and am not sold on any of the proposals. Transparency (social) is the option I dislike least, but due to deep divisions between the "hard sciences" and the "soft sciences", it feels like it excludes the same behavior when done by a scientist. While there are differences in the implementation details, it's the same ethical concept no matter what the specific field is.

It appears that this article needs to cover transparency with details about how it is applied in many fields, and also in many ways within a single area. For example, just considering the ways it applies to government actions, we need to deal with bookkeeping, criminal justice, legislative voting (and lobbying), public health, scientific research -- and more. Many of these are neither "research" nor "humanities", the two primary proposals. We need a broad term.

Furthermore, the point behind the disambiguating term is to make it clear how it differs from other uses of the term. Lining up with some academic division is unimportant.

May I suggest Transparency (behavior) as a neutral alternative? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:47, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

That's not exactly to the point either but perhaps the best suggestion so far. I would go for it, such that the article can develop. After a while, someone might come up with a better idea. --Daniel Mietchen (talk) 15:46, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank WhatamIdoing for helping out and presenting a new alternative, Daniel, do the edits you like, as you suggest, developing the article further is a better option then stalling, happy editing. cheers Mion (talk) 11:56, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

I did thank WhatamIdoing, moved the page and cleaned up the remnants of the discussion in terms of direct redirects. --Daniel Mietchen (talk) 13:07, 27 October 2008 (UTC) 

It's a Property not Behavior

i.e. that of being open and visible for inspection. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 11:02, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

should be moved to [[Transparency (<property>)]] where I assume it's currently "politics".72.228.177.92 (talk) 19:04, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Nonetheless removing:{{Multiple issues|POV=May 2008|expert=Categories|date=November 2008}} as there's no discussion and no assignment of a subject area. Also the disambig page is entangled in the conceptual error. Actually what I was referring to above would probably be the core/master article for the concept in it's various "humanities and business" forms. Lycurgus (talk) 01:02, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Continued quality issues

It seems that this is a subject with an agenda. The mention of an American President when much more significant political leaders has a historic relevance to the subject (a lot of Victorian Prime Ministers held sway over more of the world's politics and also belonged to secret societies). In addition the relevance of transparency in a digitally mediated society is hardly mentioned. I dealt with it here: NewPR Wiki - Defining Transparency. Nature of Transparency http://www.thenewpr.com/wiki/pmwiki.php?pagename=DefiningTransparency.NatureofTransparency — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dphillips4363 (talk • contribs) 14:07, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Decided to make this a new section, since the most recent topic is from 2010 and the last major thread is from 2008. Anyway, it seems like some of the issues mentioned years ago still remain.

I've removed two unsorted lists that were made up of a random assortment of quotes, qualities, philosophies, and examples that had virtually nothing in common with the article or each other. They were written in such a style that I almost expected them to end with, “Truth, justice, and the American way.” I'm also pretty sure they weren't meant to be taken seriously, as they included items like, “Transparency is the best deodorant.” (Admittedly that was a nice laugh, almost wish I could keep it)

I added a few templates requesting sources in some areas where they're lacking. There might still be some neutrality issues, as well (particularly the politics section, which I think comes off as rather black and white in its comparison of liberal and participative democracy), but I haven't added the NPOV dispute template as I probably won't be active enough on this page to follow up on it. It shouldn't be too difficult to bring it into balance anyway, since nothing seems malicious. Basically, while a lot of the things said in favor of transparency are true, compelling, and attractive, there is virtually no reference to any downside or dissenting view in most of the sections, and where they do exist they receive one sentence or less.

I moved the “management” section above the “corporate” section as it contains the definition of radical transparency, which is then referred to in “corporate”. I merged the paragraphs in "management", since the second one basically repeated the first. I trimmed the “Politics” section, since some of it wasn't specific to politics and would've been more appropriate for an introduction to the article in general. Under “Technology”, I changed the phrase “open-source software” to link to the article of the same name rather than the one on free software, as the very first sentence in “free software” says, “Not to be confused with freeware or open-source software.”

I'd also like to suggest that someone might be able to merge the “Corporate” and “Management” sections into one, since each is only about two lines long and they both cover business conduct. - Dapper cthulhu (talk) 04:33, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Political movements around transparency and criticism of concept

I added a reference to the Pirate Party phenomenon, whose political platform is in large part driven by demands for transparency. I also think this entry deserves some mention about philosophical critiques of the concept of transparency, so I started a new section on criticism, which does need a lot of expansion. Cheers, Mabuse (talk) 02:08, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Interesting article about transparency in medicine

Check out the NY Times about researchers pushing medical firms to release data.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 12:11, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Introductory paragraph

Someone fluent in English should look at this opening paragraph -- I read the first sentence several times and it still made no grammatical sense, there are too many errors to list. BTW: this is an important and relevant topic, requiring due justice from its Wikipedia article. --OldCommentator (talk) 13:36, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi there. I spruced up the opening paragraph for clarity and concision. Thanks for bringing this issue to attention. — Asgardiator ^{Iä! Iä!} 21:25, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

asgardiator

TjNovaSage (talk) 00:57, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Usable content?

Hi! One of my students created a draft for the article, but I didn't know if it could/should be merged. I figure that I'd link to their draft here and let you guys decide: User:Octopus's garden/sandbox. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:50, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

"Government Transparency" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Government Transparency. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 June 11#Government Transparency until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. 1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 21:53, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Transparency (design ethos)

I made a quick edit to the lead to establish a second lead head for the completely incompatible sense used in information security.

The two senses have nothing in common but the word itself, and worse still, employed with their metaphors of transparency in pure antithesis.

Crunching these onto the same page is ugly. Splitting out the runt (infosec) onto its own page is also ugly, because I don't think it could ever become much of a page.

I don't have a good answer in Wikipedia scope.

But for my own notes, the runt topic was very quickly split out to a runt page titled transparency (design ethos).

My own wiki doesn't give a damn whether fragments ever grow up to become a real boy. — MaxEnt 19:27, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Mie Cho

1.47.156.161 (talk) 10:44, 11 March 2023 (UTC)