James D. Forrester wrote:
Urgh. Quite apart from anything else, 'leftist' is a relativistic, and hence inherently-POV, word;
Sure, but he wasn't writing an encyclopedia article, he was editorializing. I am a strong libertarian, politically, and I should hope that if I started going around turning various articles into libertarian rants, people would complain about it.
that you consider 'leftist' persons' examination of past events is "revis[ing] history", that you implicitly push the idea that such historical revisionism is bad, and that you generalise on this point, implying that the cause celebre of 'leftist'-ism is said historical revisionism and that all 'leftist' persons, also lend to a disregard for your opinion based on the way you have stated it, I would have thought.
Well, I don't know. There is such a thing as a generally leftist POV, as you've acknowledge. And such a POV is not good for an encyclopedia article, which should be neutral.
Surely peoples' politics shouldn't affect what you think of them as responsible people?
Not usually, at least not in the Wikipedia context. But I think his claim was that 172 puts leftist pov into articles, which is a legitimate complaint, if true. (Whenever I've looked, 172's edits aren't particular problematic. We all come from a perspective, of course, and he's no different.)
--Jimbo