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_Revolution&a... 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?
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?
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Fred Bauder wrote:
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.
I'm just a bystander here. 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.
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.
Fred
From: tarquin tarquin@planetunreal.com Reply-To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 12:59:48 +0100 To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Please, no more personal attacks
Fred Bauder wrote:
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.
I'm just a bystander here. 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.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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"
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.
Fred Bauder wrote:
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.
It would be more helpful if you could give a link to a specific diff, so that we could see for ourself that "oh, in such-and-such a case, this person deleted this block of text, when they probably should have just edited it to remove bias".
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 think it would be much better to take a deep breath and bow our heads momentarily out of respect for the gift that someone else has given us by writing on the topic at all. We may not agree, but we can respect that they have reasons for what they have written, and we can accept our humble responsibility to join with them to make the article better.
Feeling a lack of respect for others is not usually conducive to level-headed thinking about how to make the article change so that it is acceptable to us both.
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.
I agree. In this case, both sides have a responsibility to come to the table with fresh new ideas. How can that part of the article be changed so that both sides will be able to view it as neutral?
Those who would delete any mention of [[Tiananmen Square]] from the article on [[China]] cover themselves with shame.
I agree completely that an article on [[China]] needs to have a mention of [[Tiananmen Square]]. What reasons were given for omitting it?
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.
I do agree with you completely. If a group of people are working on something, and if they all tend to agree on a particular worldview, then it's undoubtably helpful to them if someone with a different perspective comes in to review the article. The individuals in the group, and the individual coming to the article, BOTH have some responsibilities, of course...
1. The newcomer should be kind and thoughtful with changes, making minor changes to wording whenever possible, rather than wholesale delections.
2. The group should avoid being defensive about their work, and even if the newcomer is wrong in some way, try to accomodate what is good in what they are doing.
-----
One view of the wiki process is _competitive_, i.e. we each work to insert our own bias into articles, either subtly in order to fly under the radar or blatantly in order to have a bargaining chip in the ensuing melee. ("If I write that Noam Chomsky is a deranged psychopath, they'll go ballistic, but then I'll be well fixed to offer the 'compromise' that Noam Chomsky is an advocate of genocide.")
But a better view, the proper view, is to view the process as _cooperative_. We each work to eliminate our own bias in articles, trying to help others make a presentation that's satisfactory to us all. ("Hmmm, this article is all praise for Noam Chomsky, but fails to acknowledge that many people have been sharply critical of his positions over the years. I'll insert something to that effect, couched as carefully as possible so as to not reveal that I personally think that he's a deranged psychopath.")
--Jimbo
--- Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote:
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.
I agree. In this case, both sides have a responsibility to come to the table with fresh new ideas. How can that part of the article be changed so that both sides will be able to view it as neutral? --Jimbo
The [[communist state]] article was intended for the discussion of how the communist system was *supposed to * work. If you are writing about how it actually works in real life, you should write at [[communist government]]. --LittleDan
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
The [[communist state]] article was intended for the discussion of how the communist system was *supposed to * work. If you are writing about how it actually works in real life, you should write at [[communist government]].
Then neither of those titles is very good, as they don't adequately summarize the intention of the page, right?
--Jimbo
--- Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
The [[communist state]] article was intended for
the
discussion of how the communist system was
*supposed
to * work. If you are writing about how it
actually
works in real life, you should write at
[[communist
government]].
Then neither of those titles is very good, as they don't adequately summarize the intention of the page, right?
--Jimbo
Yeah, but that's just what I was told.
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Je Ĵaŭdo 22 Majo 2003 10:55, Daniel Ehrenberg skribis:
The [[communist state]] article was intended for the discussion of how the communist system was *supposed to * work. If you are writing about how it actually works in real life, you should write at [[communist government]].
Pardon me, but that seems like a real strange way to make the distinction. Wouldnt' it make more sense to split it up explicitly?
eg, [[Communist states in theory]] [[Communist states in practice]]
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
On Thu, 2003-05-22 at 14:01, Brion Vibber wrote:
Je Ĵaŭdo 22 Majo 2003 10:55, Daniel Ehrenberg skribis:
The [[communist state]] article was intended for the discussion of how the communist system was *supposed to * work. If you are writing about how it actually works in real life, you should write at [[communist government]].
Pardon me, but that seems like a real strange way to make the distinction. Wouldnt' it make more sense to split it up explicitly?
eg, [[Communist states in theory]] [[Communist states in practice]]
Yes, it would. Gotta love that passive voice: "the [[communist state]] article was intended..." By whom, I wonder.
Moreover, if you read the content of the [[communist state]] entry, it's evident that it's not just about theory.
--- The Cunctator cunctator@kband.com wrote:
Yes, it would. Gotta love that passive voice: "the [[communist state]] article was intended..." By whom, I wonder.
Moreover, if you read the content of the [[communist state]] entry, it's evident that it's not just about theory.
I'm just repeating what was said previously on this list.
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On Thu, 2003-05-22 at 21:22, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
--- The Cunctator cunctator@kband.com wrote:
Yes, it would. Gotta love that passive voice: "the [[communist state]] article was intended..." By whom, I wonder.
Moreover, if you read the content of the [[communist state]] entry, it's evident that it's not just about theory.
I'm just repeating what was said previously on this list.
The question which, like Chthulu, rises forbiddingly from the depths, is: why did you do so?
And I'm not trying to be pusillanimous. I'm just trying to point out that avoiding the passive voice is healthy practice.
--- The Cunctator cunctator@kband.com wrote:
On Thu, 2003-05-22 at 21:22, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
--- The Cunctator cunctator@kband.com wrote:
Yes, it would. Gotta love that passive voice:
"the
[[communist state]] article was intended..." By whom, I wonder.
Moreover, if you read the content of the
[[communist
state]] entry, it's evident that it's not just about theory.
I'm just repeating what was said previously on
this list.
The question which, like Chthulu, rises forbiddingly from the depths, is: why did you do so?
And I'm not trying to be pusillanimous. I'm just trying to point out that avoiding the passive voice is healthy practice.
If I avoided the passive voice, I probably still would have said "someone said..." --LittleDan
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Je Ĵaŭdo 22 Majo 2003 10:55, Daniel Ehrenberg skribis
Brion, the Esperanto reply heading you use didn't render properly on my computer. Are you using the x-system or something else? --LittleDan
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Je Ĵaŭdo 22 Majo 2003 18:26, Daniel Ehrenberg skribis:
Je Ä´aÅdo 22 Majo 2003 10:55, Daniel Ehrenberg skribis
Brion, the Esperanto reply heading you use didn't render properly on my computer. Are you using the x-system or something else?
That's Unicode (UTF-8 encoding). Webmail systems like Yahoo have notoriously poor support for anything but Latin-1, alas. I like to think I'm pushing the acceptance of internet standards forward. ;)
And yes, that was sent with proper headers:
Content-type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-transfer-encoding: 8BIT
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
A partial response:
Those who would delete any mention of [[Tiananmen Square]] from the article on [[China]] cover themselves with shame.
I agree completely that an article on [[China]] needs to have a mention of [[Tiananmen Square]]. What reasons were given for omitting it?
The edit, by 172, which removed this language is at:
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=China&diff=853200&oldid=...
172's comment: "(the democracy movement doesn't pose a threat to the CPC's power )"
Fred
On Wed, 2003-05-14 at 20:45, Tony Wilson wrote:
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_Revolution&a... 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?
You don't need to take a rude and abusive tone to argue a reasonable point. I don't have a problem with professional expertise, though it's not clear that any of you are particular experts on the history of technology or economic theory. I do have a problem with elitism, rudeness, threats, and defensive cliques of likeminded people.
In my opinion, it takes a lot of naivete to believe that the only reason 172 made an explicit invitation for you and Jtdirl to contribute was because you have academic backgrounds.
I don't have a problem with professional expertise, but I trust the evidence of what Wikipedians contribute over what their credentials are. There are many people in this world with PhDs. The degree, I've found in my experience, doesn't necessarily amount to much.
Finally, being an expert historian and an expert encyclopedist--and in particular, an expert Wikipedist--are not the same thing.
As I've said before when I've bleated negativity or words of caution in the past: my opinions are honest, but I hope to be proven wrong.
And hey, maybe my judgment is colored by 172 yelling at me, calling me dense, and threatening banning, and Jtdirl calling me monumentally arrogant, illinformed, with a poor grasp of the facts, and having a monumental ignorance of how academic research is done.
But I guess I should bow to their professional expertise.
I'm sorry if I upset you. You seem like an honorable person.