172 is a handful and a piece of work. Vera Cruz is a troll. We are indebted to Tannin for making this distinction.
I would work with 172. I refuse to engage with Vera Cruz. I understand that this amounts to surrender to Vera Cruz wherever he, she, it chooses, but I am not going to lose sleep over it, whereas if I try to engage with trolls I do, quite literally, lose sleep.
Tom Parmenter Ortolan88
|From: "Tony Wilson" list@redhill.net.au |Priority: Normal |X-Qmail-Scanner-Message-ID: 104271797850110872@ren.netconnect.com.au |Sender: wikien-l-admin@wikipedia.org |Reply-To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org |Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2003 22:53:42 +1100 | |I'm going to confine these remarks to the areas where I have a |reasonable amount of experience of interacting with 172, and some |expertise of my own - in other words, I'll discuss 172's contribution |to articles dealing with colonial history in the late 19th and early |20th Centuries. (I have not followed developments in the articles on |modern China and the USSR at all closely, nor am I especially |well-versed in those subjects, so on those I'll say nothing.) | |User 172 seems to have the ability to arouse great passion. I think |it's fair to summarise the charges against him as: | |1: Left-wing bias |2: Aggressive defence of his contributions, in particular instant |reversion without comment to the "authorised version" |3: Failure to work co-operatively with others |4: Insisting on cross-posting more-or-less the same text to a number |of related articles. | |And I think it's also fair to add that a great deal of the venom 172 |attracts is not simply because of the points above, but because: | |1: He is all too often abrupt and dismissive of those who take a contrary view. |2: His prose is very difficult to edit. It is dense, convoluted, and |far from easy reading. Short of wholesale slashing, editing 172's work |is not for the faint-hearted. |3: His writing is littered with the jargon of Marxian political |economy. Readers unfamiliar with sociology or political economy can |all too easily confuse many of the common technical terms, which have |specific, value-neutral meanings, with the more familiar terms of |nakedly value-laden Leninist tracts (which were quite well-used until |recently). The untrained reader thus is prone to jump to the |conclusion that 172 is a raving communist. | |These factors are multiplied because they work in combination. One |tends to find a statement that has a questionable POV but feel |reluctant to edit it because it is embedded in dense, complex, and |technical prose, and further reluctant because one fears an edit war. | |On the other hand. 172 has a great deal of expertise in certain |fields. On the development of European colonialism, for example, I |think I'm safe in saying that I am not alone in having developed |considerable respect for his knowledge. (See Talk:New Imperialism for |evidence of my assertion here.) He writes in great detail, and on |dauntingly difficult subjects. Although I firmly believe that 172's |longer contributions need careful copy editing and peer review before |they are set in concrete, they make an excellent foundation for |readable, fact-filled articles of real scholarship. For an example of |this, wade through the most recent two talk pages in New |Imperialism. There you will see that Ortolan88, Slrubenstein and I |made a good start on the task of making the article neutral in tone |and accessible to the general reader without losing accuracy or too |much detail. 172 was, on the whole, co-operative with us, and the |article began to improve a great deal. It was only when the far more |disruptive and unreasonable Vera Cruz stepped in with (as another |contributor complained) the "death of a thousand cuts" that Ortolan88 |gave up in disgust. I perservered for a little longer before doing |likewise, and I think even SLR has become discouraged now. | |We can work with 172. We can't work with the mindless chaos of a Vera |Cruz edit war. Get rid of that particular disruptive influence and |SLR or I (or more likely both of us working together) will lick "New |Imperialisim" into shape inside a week, and unless I miss my guess, we |will do it with the help and co-operation of 172. | |(I should add, just in case the point isn't clear from my comments |above, that without 172's solid foundation of detailed content, the |eventual article would be weaker.) | |172 *can* be reasoned with. He and I engaged in a moderately |protracted edit war in History of the Democratic Republic of the |Congo. (It's worth reviewing the history of that page, and reading its |talk page also.) Consider the following exchange from Talk:History of |the Democratic Republic of the Congo. | |TANNIN: (as a PS to an extended and detailed defence of my point of |view about the edit war) The introduction of technical terms, |especially terms from political economy which have become loaded with |emotive associations in the minds of most non-specialists, is |something to avoid except where absolutely essential. Just as writers |on mathematics have learned the hard way that littering texts for the |general reader with mathematical formulae is a sure-fire shortcut to |eternal obscurity, so too must the historian be aware that many of his |most useful terms are counter- productive in non-specialist |contexts. In fact, it is worse for the historian than it is for the |mathematician: readers see a formula and just skip over it because |they don't understand it or don't want to stop and puzzle it out |before continuing, but readers see text laced with terms like |"multinational", "capitalism", "accumulation of surpluses", |"inalienable", "commodities", and "bourgeois" and, unless the terms |are used sparingly, and in a way that makes their technical meaning |clear (as opposed to their emotion-laden common meanings) they recoil |in horror. Readers don't understand mathemetician's technical |expressions (their formulae). Readers *misunderstand* political |economists' technical expressions (words like those listed above) - |which is a good deal worse. | |172: I truly appreciate your suggestions. I will strive to improve my |communication on the grounds you listed. | |Now 172 *did* then take the opportunity to quote my comment in his own |defence on various user talk pages, and (in my view) made more of it |than was actually there - I went so far as to complain to him that he |had quoted me out of context at one point - but I genuinely believe |that he has learned a little from that exchange (and from some other, |broadly similar, ones, both with me and with other contributors). He |remains a prickly character but his prose is improving, and while he |is certainly not as easy to work with as some, he can be amenable to |evidence and reason. (As the history and talk of History of the |Democratic Republic of the Congo shows.) | |In summary, yes, 172 creates difficulties. But he also makes a very |useful contribution to Wikipedia, and is not impossible to work |with. He has moderated his initial anti-cooperative behaviour, and (I |suspect) will learn to moderate it further as time goes by (not least |in consequence of this present controversy). | | |Tony Wilson |(Tannin) |list@redhill.net.au | | |_______________________________________________ |WikiEN-l mailing list |WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org |http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l |