I am not sure that TDC's behavior warrants a hard ban, but 172 is right that there is a serious problem and I am sorry to see people responding to his concerns by criticizing 172 rather than by examining the issue. 172 can certainly be hard to work with at times (he and I have had spats in the past), but he always seems to respond to other people's concerns. Moreover, he has made substantive scholarly contributions to various articles. One can not say the same about TDC. I have yet to see an instance where TDC has made an informed contribution to any article.

One person remarked that TDC adds critiques of communism. The point is not whether communism is good or bad -- informed and thoughtful people can take either position or even argue that there are good and bad things about different communist regimes or communist thinkers. The point is that TDC's critiques are ill-informed, sloppy, and ultimately useless. He inserts opinions, not accounts of scholarly (or other) debates. That some of us may agree with his opinions is neither here nor there; articles should be informative and are not personal essays.

Moreover, TDC cannot engage in constructive discussion. Believe me, on both the Talk Fascism and Talk Karl Marx pages I and many others (Andylehrer is the best example) tried many times to engage him civilly -- to explain how he was misunderstanding or misconstruing historical issues or scholarly debates, or how he was misconstruing wikipedia. The result was only an escalation of hostility on his part. 172 and I lost patience a few days ago, but others continue to be very civil with to absolutely no avail. This is not a problem between TDC and either me or 172, it is a problem between TDC and many others that obstructs progress on an article.

The Karl Marx page was recently protected because TDC kept reverting content I had added. The problem is, all past behavior indicates that TDC will not accept anything close to a compromise on the talk page.

I did not know that Steve and Fred had blocked TDC for 24 hours. Believe me, I would have been delighted if after that block he apologized to me and also started responding constructively to others on talk pages. It just doesn't seem that that will happen. I really don't know what to do, and I don't think protecting pages is a good long-term solution,

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein Associate Professor Department of Sociology and Anthropology Bentley Annex Ohio University Athens, Ohio 45701

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