On 5/15/03 10:26 AM, "tarquin" tarquin@planetunreal.com wrote:
Fred Bauder wrote:
That is the position they took. But in practice their postion was that it was "their article". They assumed a veto power (as a group) on how the article was to be defined and what could be included in it.
It seemed a fairly sensible thing to me once I read about it. Fred, if someone came along and sais the article "Fish" should also mention "Saturn", we'd tell them it wasn't suitable. They might raise similar criticisms of "veto power"
Let's back up a step. You originally wrote:
But from what I gathered, that page wasn't the place to discuss the specifics of what *certain* communist states have done, but the political system in the abstract.
For one, that's not what the text Jtdirl & 172 didn't want on the page discussed. The text was about general/common characteristics of the Communist state in practice. *If those exist* then it would be entirely appropriate for that text to be on the *Communist state* entry.
This was not about "Saturn" vs. "fish".
Second: the entry title is not "Communist state as a political system in the abstract".
Third: if you look at the entry, it contains several specifics of what *certain* communist states have done. In other words, the claim that that was what was wrong with the text was specious.
But if you truly see this as a "Saturn" vs. "fish" issue, then perhaps it is me who is unclear on the concept. My impression was that 172 and Jtdirl were upset by the claims about Communist states Fred was making and that they then decided to use the argument that they knew what "Communist state" meant and Fred and anyone who disagreed with them didn't. I had hoped that instead of attacking me they would have put in the effort to make the entry clear and convincing to me. But perhaps I'm particularly obtuse.