The Cuncator is concerned about the effect of a group of folks who share a partisan point of view working together both to push that point of view and as a block within Wikipedia's decision making process. Professional qualifications and experience have nothing to do with it. Tannin, 172, and Jtdirl exhibit a common pattern of partisan behavior, of left wing historical revisionism, of deleting blocks of factual material that does not meet their ideological criteria.
My method of dealing with a group like this is just to treat them for most purposes as a single individual and accord them no more respect than I would to any single individual with a couple of puppets dangling from his hands.
I distinctly remember a mob the members of which all had postgraduate degrees engaging in infantile behavior during the Cultural Revolution. (They thought Madam Mao was real cool, Of course after the Gang of Four was arrested, a sudden case of collective amnesia set in). Being smart or educated is not the issue, the problem is pushing a point of view agenda, and playing politics within Wikipedia in pursuit of that agenda. Given the past editing behavior of Tannin, 172, and Jtdirl I think that is what we can expect in the future. A pattern of very ugly partisan behavior. I supported banning Helga and certainly would never have considered her being a sysop. I oppose left-wing historical revisionism for the same reasons I opposed Helga's partisan efforts.
The holocaust was real, people who say it was real are telling the truth. When I make a link to [[mass murder]] in an article on the [[communist state]] I'm not making something up. The shame is on the folks who think they can delete the link under some pretext. When I put a link to [[Tiananmen Square]] in the aricle on [[China]] I'm not somehow a victim of my inflated imagination. Those who would delete any mention of [[Tiananmen Square]] from the article on [[China]] cover themselves with shame.
That said, as someone pointed out, being a sysop does not give you extra power when you edit. But under that logic Helga could very well be a sysop in good standing at this point.
As to the title of this posting, "Please, no more personal attacks", it is the viscious personal attacks these folks engaged in which created the issue and opposition to them.
However, asking friends to work on an article like the [[industrial revolution]]; gee, any of us ought to be able to ask folks whose work we respect to work with us on any article.
The abuse comes in when anyone who happens to not accept the group product tries to edit it and the whole bunch jumps on them. That would be unacceptable and not worthy of respect.
Fred
From: "Tony Wilson" list@redhill.net.au Reply-To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 10:45:23 +1000 To: "WikiEN" wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please, no more personal attacks
The Cunctator wrote:
I'm just hoping Wikipedia doesn't significantly factionalize--or rather, stays in factions of one. I'm mildly disturbed by the way 172 invited particular people to work on an entry ("Wanted: Tannin, Sluberstien, and Jtdirl")http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Industrial_Revolutio n&action=history because I don't see that kind of behavior boding well for the future.
Knock it off, Cunc.
That's quite uncalled for, and I'm getting very tired of your relentless sniping on this list. If you had bothered to THINK about it for a momemt, you might have realised that the three people named were named for a good and obvious reason:
I have a degree in that field and (before I went into business) used to teach it at tertiary level.
Slrubenstein can also be presumed to have formal qualifications in the field (doubtless higher ones than mine) as he too teaches it at tertiary level
Jtdirl has a phD in the field, and teaches it.
You have a problem with professional expertise? Or are you just making trouble?
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