I'm on the verge of following Tom's lead. What's the point of trying to even try, when people like Lir/Vera are allowed back without warning and continue to slash their way through the 'pedia with no one even bothering to let us know that they were responsible for allowing them back in, and what their rationale was. Zoe Tom Parmenter <tompar(a)world.std.com> wrote:|From: koyaanisqatsi(a)nupedia.com |Cc: |Sender: wikien-l-admin(a)wikipedia.org |Reply-To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org |Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2003 22:18:58 -0800 | |mav writes: |>No! You are reading too much into my words. You never said that it is |>possible for us to keep from bickering and wrangling so my above |statement |>was not directed at you but at Wikipedia skeptics in general who /do/ |say |>exactly that (and then fault us for not accomplishing this artificial |ideal). | |Well, my point was that it seems wikipedia could be more collegial. |Some conflict is to be expected, yes, but I rather suspect some people |look forward to it when it comes. Some people live for it, some |merely tolerate it, some people are bothered by it and avoid it. I'm |formerly of class 1 (horrible arrogant troll I was 5 years ago), |recently of class 2, moving towards class 3. I guess this is my |problem, not everyone else's, except I wonder how many people really |_enjoy_ acrimony--fewer than 12 on the 'pedia, I imagine, probably |fewer than six, and I wonder how many of the other several hundred |active contributors truly are put off by it. Those kind of people |tend to be quieter about it until they've had enough, and then they |leave, with or without explanation. I think Julie was one of those |people; and losing her was a considerable loss. I don't think I'm a skeptic, I believe in NPOV, and I believe it can be achieved, but I'm worn out. I am going to join class 3 and avoid all conflict. A few pointed questions and an errant indentation of a talk page comment have earned me a bitter enemy, neither a nice person, nor an interesting one. Asking, and then trying to explain, what was new about [[new imperialism]] led to weeks of fussing and fighting about a topic that was peripheral to me. I helped, but wouldn't an article on ''[[Bleak House]]'' or ''[[The Way We Live Now]]'' have been a better expenditure of my time? I just don't have any interest in struggling with anyone anymore. A few tussles here and there (and yes, wisecracks and smarty-pants remarks) were fun, but from now on when people have no commitment to anything but conflict, they're going to have to conflict with someone else. There aren't many of them. I hope they lose, but I'm out of bullets. I'm going to concentrate on novelists and pop music and jazz and language and and copy editing and other odds and ends where I have some scraps of knowledge and just let the article on [[Richard Wagner]] go to hell without my protest and [[remote viewing]] can claim that "viewers" have seen Pontius Pilate's signature on Jesus's death warrant and I won't say a word. By saying that I am going to join class 3 and avoid all conflict, I am saying that I am surrendering the field to the anti-NPOV forces. I don't know that I have distinguished myself in this area, but I have tried. I'm not going to try any more. In the meantime, if people want to write blatant and stupid articles, I hope someone else will stop them. I'll be off bolding alternate forms of article titles, putting song titles in quotes and album titles in italics and writing little articles about Trollope and Dickens and Pinetop Perkins, sincerely hoping that none of the troubling people will bother to track me down there. But each time they do track me down, I'm dropping out of the topic. And, if I drop out of enough topics, if even [[punctuation]] and [[English plurals]] start drawing the energy vampires, then I guess I'll just be gone for good. I'll ask my questions where they have a chance of being answered civilly. The new person writing articles about [[rodeo]] took my skeptical but honest questions about [[bareback bronc]], [[saddle bronc]] and [[bull riding]] in hand and just plain answered them, never bothering to accuse me of being a PETA member or a disgruntled cowboy failure. Someone just popped in to [[Talk:Mumia Abu Jamal]] to compliment us on the achievement of NPOV. We worked on that one back in August. It seems decades ago. I just don't think it would have happened that way now and I'm fearful of even mentioning it, but since I am taking it off my watchlist, maybe I won't hear of any bad things happening to it. Tom Parmenter Ortolan88 PS - I just remembered I still have a little backlog on the [[Bombing of Dresden in World War II]] and [[David Irving]] that I promised to get off my chest, but even there, one peep of protest and I'm out. And then, no more like it. See you in [[knot]]s. | |best wishes, I will see you all (except the lurkers) ;-) in a few weeks. | |kq |_______________________________________________ |WikiEN-l mailing list |WikiEN-l(a)wikipedia.org |http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l | _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now

Can someone with a legal background explain what happens if Tarquin does not appear in a Delaware court? Is a "default judgment" then likely? Regards, Erik -- +++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more http://www.gmx.net +++ NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr für 1 ct/ Min. surfen!

WE SHOULD NOT WRITE TO MUCH IN THE MAILING LIST OR WIKIPEDIA ABOUT ISIS/TARQUIN IT'S BETTER TO SWITCH TO PRIVATE MAIL

Tom Parmenter wrote: [...] What I'm hoping is that we can compile some suggestions for a middle ground. How can we avoid conflict without surrendering the field to "the anti-NPOV forces"? ------- The thing that pains me most is when I see good people at each other's throats. *Those* are the ones we should be able to avoid. Yes, there will always be a tiny majority of insufferable jerks. Those can be banned if they get bad enough. But sometimes what happens around here is that good people get mad at each other, and things spiral out of control. --Jimbo