Re: [WikiEN-l] Please, try to be kind to one another.

I agree. I also tried to moderate the tone on that talk page but I gave up. Throwing around terms like "vandal" to describe Fred is, IMO, over the top and greatly cheapens the word. A certain very longtime user throws that word around all the time to describe what he sees as anti-Israeli/Jew POV and the result is that, I at least, don't take his "vandalism" claims too seriously anymore (I also tend to stay away from articles that he edits - lest I become labeled a vandal). It is also a red herring that diverts attention away from discussing what to do with POV text (which can often be made acceptable by attributing POV and moving it to another section or even article). The result of name-calling like that is often a war between egos AND NOT a discussion about improving the disputed text. This makes compromising very difficult and it makes it near impossible for the person labeled a "vandal" to agree with his accusers that his text was not at all appropriate to begin with (since by agreeing with that he also implicitly agrees to being a "vandal"). And since when is an article supposed to be limited to one POV (in this case the "political science definition")? If there are other valid POVs on what the term means then those POVs should be included in a neutral and fair way (per our NPOV policy). Fred was just adding what he thought was valid explanatory text that described the characteristics of a communist state. This text is, IMO, is a bit biased against communist states and is also misplaced (it is really about the characteristics of totalitarian states). But this is a difference of opinion and NOT vandalism. If 10% of the effort put into writing kilobyte after kilobyte of text slamming Fred on the communist state talk page and this mailing list where put into improving Fred's text and moving it to a more appropriate page, then Wikipedia would have a great article on totalitarian states. But instead we have a talk page (and two archives!) that would be right at home in the archives of USENET flame wars. Also, saying that you putting forth "ironic mockery" is a cop-out for bad behavior; it is difficult enough to properly express those types of language and cultural subtleties in emails to close friends who are familiar with you, your culture and the way you express yourself (and who have the same or similar disposition/temperament). On a mixed list like this, with people from different cultures, dispositions and different levels of mastery of English, it is not possible to be both "ironic" and "mocking" without coming across as petulant or even mean-spirited. I know that I'm guilty of being rude at times too, but I almost always give a real apology after I have my hissy-fit. I for one am sick of the low level of discourse on many talk pages, this list and especially edit summaries. Talk pages can be archived and forgotten but we should think about how edit wars will look in a page's history a month, year, decade or more after the event. Screaming summaries like "PLEASE BAN FRED BAUDER FOR CONTINUOUS VANDALISM OF THIS ARTICLE. HIS VANDALISM HAS HAD TO BE REVERTED NEARLY 20 TIMES HERE. HE HAS DONE THE SAME ELSEWHERE " can only be answered by other screaming summaries - and all that is part of the page forever. I feel that Wikipedia is a very important project and that one day there will be historians and ethnographers mining our page histories, talk pages and mailing lists to see what made us tick as a virtual society. So we should all think to ourselves about what type of legacy we want to leave behind. Please, try to be kind to one another. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l