On February 2 Frank v Waveren wrote:
On Wed, Feb 02, 2005 at 11:00:15AM -0500, steven l. rubenstein wrote:
topic. When Jalnet2 insists on making uninformed claims, he is not insulting me -- he is insulting the hard work of scores of evolutionary scientists, and dishonoring the integrity of Wikipedia, which depends on editors doing some research.
I'd advise you not to see edits you disagree with as insults, no matter how stupid you find them; Whether you considerd them insults to you or things you hold dear doesn't matter, in the end no good can come of it. Think of them as mistakes or disagreements, it gives a much more pleasant atmosphere.
Frank, you are absolutely right, and I thank you for making this point. To be clear, though, my intention in the passage you quote is that I do not take Jalnet2's reversions personally -- I do not think he is insulting me.
The issue in this particular case was that over the course of Jalnet2 was making a variety of edits almost all of which were variations on the same point, since November 11, and I am one of eight editors who has reverted this point. His point being that most evolutionary scientists or most social scientists accept an essentialist notion of race, and if he has any evidence of this he has never presented it. In the countless reverts since he first inserted this point on 11/11, various people have provided explanations in the talk section; he has never given a substantive response. (by way of contrast, I think he is the only one who has reverted any of my work on this page -- at least since 11/11/04. There are, of course, many who have edited my contributions; sometimes I see their point immediately, other times we discuss it in the talk pages, all I can say for myself is that I have always been satisfied that whatever the outcome of these edits and discussions has been, it has led to the improvement of the article).
So I do see in Jalnet2's edits a real disregard for our process and for the principles of verification and quality of edits. On the other hand, his edits have been limited to this one point, so he has not done any of the kind of damage to an article that would lead me to RfC or mediation. I have to add that I am not sure how that would help. My complaint about Jalnet2 is not that he often reverts my edits, and I really do not care about how he has treated me. My complaint is that he keeps asserting something that is wrong, and one would have to know a fair amount about population genetics and human evolution to see that. In short, his behavior does irritate me, but not enough that I feel justified making a formal complaint. It is the content that concerns me, and my sense is that our process for resolving conflicts focusses on behavior rather than content. I just do not see this as useful here. So what if Jalnet2 limits himself to two reverts a day? As long as the content of his edits are wrong, they just have to be deleted.
I want to be crystal clear about what I think is the main point here: in the two-plus months that Jalnet2 has been making edits, there has been no evolution or change in his view. His basic point remains the same. It is one thing if you make 100 mistakes but they are all different mistakes. It is another if you make the same mistake 100 times. There has been enough discussion on the talk page over the past two and a half months to show that Jalnet2 is the only editor currently making this mistake; none of the others active on the article have agreed with him, and many have explained why on the talk page. As long as Jalnet2 persists in putting misleading information into the article, someone is going to have to revert it.
Someone claimed that I was moaning about the three-revert rule. I really do stand by it -- it is clear that we need it, and even if I think Dante's action yesterday was unnecessary, I am more than willing to live with it as the consequence of a needed policy.
However, I think the real need for the 3-revert rule is to put a brake on serious behavioral problems. The problem with the 3-revert rule is that it is utterly neutral to content. I think when there are repeated problems with content, we may need other mechanisms.
Steve
Steven L. Rubenstein Associate Professor Department of Sociology and Anthropology Bentley Annex Ohio University Athens, Ohio 45701