James D. Forrester wrote:
Urgh. Quite apart from anything else,
'leftist' is a relativistic,
and hence inherently-POV, word;
Sure, but he wasn't writing an encyclopedia article, he was
editorializing. I am a strong libertarian, politically, and I should
hope that if I started going around turning various articles into
libertarian rants, people would complain about it.
that you consider 'leftist' persons'
examination of past events is
"revis[ing] history", that you implicitly push the idea that such
historical revisionism is bad, and that you generalise on this point,
implying that the cause celebre of 'leftist'-ism is said historical
revisionism and that all 'leftist' persons, also lend to a disregard
for your opinion based on the way you have stated it, I would have
thought.
Well, I don't know. There is such a thing as a generally leftist POV,
as you've acknowledge. And such a POV is not good for an encyclopedia
article, which should be neutral.
Surely peoples' politics shouldn't affect what
you think of them as
responsible people?
Not usually, at least not in the Wikipedia context. But I think his
claim was that 172 puts leftist pov into articles, which is a
legitimate complaint, if true. (Whenever I've looked, 172's edits
aren't particular problematic. We all come from a perspective, of
course, and he's no different.)
--Jimbo