I started this RfC, and the subject line says it all. My argument is in favor, and is as follows: this is one of the most important, diverse countries in the world, and one of the most controversial in nature and history. You cannot simply lock it because of the actions of a few spammers several years ago. That is simply censorship, and a form not befitting Wikipedia. In its current form this article is completely inadequate. The length of the Wikipedia article on Papua New Guinea is roughly 7200 words long; by my count the total word count for Indonesia comes to 6,386. That is simply horseshit by modern standards of Wikipedia. As the article thankfully says, there are 300 ethnic groups, speaking more than 700 distinct, living languages in Indonesia. It is an archipelago of more than 18,000 islands. I calculate that at 1/3 of a word for each island. Disgusting. Granted only about 6,000 are inhabited, and only about 1,000 permanently so, but as far as I know that's still way more than any other country in the world.
- I realize that there is also a separate article on Indonesian history. Let me point out that there is also a separate article on U.S. History. The part of the "History" section within the the main U.S. article, which spans only the time since European contact, is ~2,700 words long. The entire "History" section of the "Indonesia" article is only 913 words long. The part of that section which spans 2,700 years of well-recorded history in Indonesia contains only 672 words, vs. the ~400 year history of the post-European-contact-U.S.A. And incidentally, the English is terrible, and contains a HUGE mistake, substituting Sukarno for Suharto. It also makes no real mention of the slaughter of 1965-1966, or of the CIA (who likely backed and triggered the slaughter) report calling it "one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century, along with the Soviet purges of the 1930s, the Nazi mass murders during the Second World War, and the Maoist bloodbath of the early 1950s" (see Wikipedia article on Indonesian killings of 1965–66). The pre-history of Indonesia is quite a bit longer than the U.S. prehistory as well, but is about the same number of words, and makes no mention of Homo floresiensis. There is no mention of the genocide-like travesties committed in Timor Timur (Timor-Leste) and New Guinea, facts already mentioned by two different users on this talk page, but subsequently ignored.
While there a mention and link to the Wallace Line, there is is little elaboration on this extremely important feature. There is no mention or even links to Danau Kelimutu, or to the the Komodo dragon, even though there are articles on both of those subjects.
- Neither is there any mention, in the tragically short description of Indonesian Culture, of the Minangkabau people. Nor, in the linked but poorly written "Indonesian Culture" article, is there any mention the Matriarchal Society of the Minangkabau, strange since the Wikipedia Matriarchal/Matrilineal societies list comprises only 39 groups throughout history. There is no direct link to the "Indonesian Cuisine" article, and in the "Indonesian Culture", Indonesian cuisine is described by someone who pretty clearly knows almost nothing about Indonesian cuisine, which, according to first sentence of the "Indonesian Cuisine" article, "...is one of the most vibrant and colourful cuisines in the world, full of intense flavour." To be honest I would have to say the "Indonesian Cuisine" article has a lot more relevant, practical, and honest information about Indonesia than does the "Indonesia"article. Someone actually decided to delete the words "religiously diverse" from the ways that Indonesia is diverse. Just so we're all aware, while the ethnic and cultural diversities of Indonesia may be more interesting to many, there is certainly no other country in the world that has so many major religions, independently flourishing under one roof. Granted that is a bit of a subjective statement, but it's true. In addition to the six state-recognized religions (Christianity x2, Islam, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Hinduism), there are also members of the Jewish faith, and several animistic belief systems. A lack of understanding on the latter issue may partly stem from the fact that "Because the government do not recognize animism indigenous tribal belief systems as official religion, as a result followers of various native animistic religions such as Dayak Kaharingan have identified themselves as Hindu in order to avoid pressure to convert to Islam or Christianity." (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Indonesia , "Other religions and beliefs"). But all this is completely immaterial to the concept of Indonesian religious diversity: in this world of globalization, it's hard to find a country without several different religious beliefs floating around. The point is in fact that several different religions have co-existed (not always peacefully, even today) in the area that is known as Indonesia for thousands of years.
Again, almost all of this information can be found somewhere on Wikipedia, but to force the casual or even fairly intrepid-if-uninformed reader to dig so hard for it is, again, indirect censorship.
While this is one of my first visits to this page, and my first attempt to edit even the Talk page, from reading the Talk page of this article, I feel that the "dominant" established users on this page are censoring the article. The people who are editing this article are not qualified to do so, and apparently not pro-active enough to actually read the information others have put forth. So unlock it and give the rest of us a chance. Tear down this ****ing wall. Apologies, but I am very frustrated and disappointed with this article.
~T — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.171.146.53 (talk) 09:33, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
“… one of the most controversial …”
That right there is a very good reason for protection. By the way, a request for comment is meant to be short and neutral, and the RFC bot didn’t pick up on it because you never signed it with ~~~~
. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 13:53, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
Should this article be unlocked? 149.171.145.145 (talk) 08:25, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
I agree Wholeheartedly that this article is woefully inadequate and reeks of having been politically cleansed like much of the history of Indonesia, I also understand why this is the case. Most records of Indonesia's history or discussions of it's present are highly loaded and biased. Whether it's the history of the Archipelago as portrayed by the current ruling powers, or the history as portrayed by neighbours or former colonial powers (including a few that are not even listed in this article like Australia that ruled briefly over Timor, or Japan, India, America, China and Arab rulers who claim to have ruled over some areas, each leaving their mark). This does make it hard to leave any truly objective comment or make any incontestable input. On top of this as a new nation, nationalism remains an important tool of state building, used to unite a disparate country. Hence anything that is posted that is critical of the very narrow official state view of the country is sure to be flamed and attacked, and anything that underestimates the rights of parties that feel oppressed by the state are also likely to come under attack. Hence I understand Wikipedia's desire to keep this a locked article. I do however agree with the above contributor that the article is far too brief and would benefit greatly by more neutrally presenting more information on the multiple viewpoints that readers should consider when forming their own views of this vast and diverse country. The article is also frightening brief given the vastness of the topic, both geographically, historically and politically. It is hard to compare Indonesia to countries other than China, Russia and India, in terms of scale and diversity. It has the width and diversity of the whole of Europe and a better documented history than most of Europe.sadly I think the euro-american-centric of most authors of wikipedia is reflected in the lack of depth and diversity of the article. Should the article be unlocked? probably not,simply because I doubt it is practical. but as a relatively infrequent author with over 30years of engagement in Indonesia who has travelled extensively across the archipelago, I would confirm the article is deeply lacking in content, particularly on sensitive issues of which there are many, but also simply in terms of depth an breadth. Is there a middle ground that would better facilitate input and improvement?
Bigyabbie (talk) 15:34, 19 October 2016 (UTC)