Mostly in defence of 172 - WikiEN-l

16 Jan 2003


      I'm going to confine these remarks to the areas where I have a reasonable amount of experience of interacting with 172, and some expertise of my own - in other words, I'll discuss 172's 
contribution to articles dealing with colonial history in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. (I have not followed developments in the articles on modern China and the USSR at all closely, nor am I 
especially well-versed in those subjects, so on those I'll say nothing.)
User 172 seems to have the ability to arouse great passion. I think it's fair to summarise the charges against him as:
1: Left-wing bias
2: Aggressive defence of his contributions, in particular instant reversion without comment to the "authorised version"
3: Failure to work co-operatively with others
4: Insisting on cross-posting more-or-less the same text to a number of related articles.
And I think it's also fair to add that a great deal of the venom 172 attracts is not simply because of the points above, but because:
1: He is all too often abrupt and dismissive of those who take a contrary view.
2: His prose is very difficult to edit. It is dense, convoluted, and far from easy reading. Short of wholesale slashing, editing 172's work is not for the faint-hearted.
3: His writing is littered with the jargon of Marxian political economy. Readers unfamiliar with sociology or political economy can all too easily confuse many of the common technical terms, which 
have specific, value-neutral  meanings, with the more familiar terms of nakedly value-laden Leninist tracts (which were quite well-used until recently). The untrained reader thus is prone to jump to 
the conclusion that 172 is a raving communist.
These factors are multiplied because they work in combination. One tends to find a statement that has a questionable POV but feel reluctant to edit it because it is embedded in dense, complex, 
and technical prose, and further reluctant because one fears an edit war.
On the other hand. 172 has a great deal of expertise in certain fields. On the development of European colonialism, for example, I think I'm safe in saying that I am not alone in having developed 
considerable respect for his knowledge. (See Talk:New Imperialism for evidence of my assertion here.) He writes in great detail, and on dauntingly difficult subjects. Although I firmly believe that 
172's longer contributions need careful copy editing and peer review before they are set in concrete, they make an excellent foundation for readable, fact-filled articles of real scholarship. For an 
example of this, wade through the most recent two talk pages in New Imperialism. There you will see that Ortolan88, Slrubenstein and I made a good start on the task of making the article neutral 
in tone and accessible to the general reader without losing accuracy or too much detail. 172 was, on the whole, co-operative with us, and the article began to improve a great deal. It was only 
when the far more disruptive and unreasonable Vera Cruz stepped in with (as another contributor complained) the "death of a thousand cuts" that Ortolan88 gave up in disgust. I perservered for a 
little longer before doing likewise, and I think even SLR has become discouraged now.
We can work with 172. We can't work with the mindless chaos of a Vera Cruz edit war.  Get rid of that particular disruptive influence and SLR or I (or more likely both of us working together) will 
lick "New Imperialisim" into shape inside a week, and unless I miss my guess, we will do it with the help and co-operation of 172.
(I should add, just in case the point isn't clear from my comments above, that without 172's solid foundation of detailed content, the eventual article would be weaker.)
172 *can* be reasoned with. He and I engaged in a moderately protracted edit war in History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (It's worth reviewing the history of that page, and reading its 
talk page also.) Consider the following exchange from Talk:History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
TANNIN: (as a PS to an extended and detailed defence of my point of view about the edit war) The introduction of technical terms, especially terms from political economy which have become 
loaded with emotive associations in the minds of most non-specialists, is something to avoid except where absolutely essential. Just as writers on mathematics have learned the hard way that 
littering texts for the general reader with mathematical formulae is a sure-fire shortcut to eternal obscurity, so too must the historian be aware that many of his most useful terms are counter-
productive in non-specialist contexts. In fact, it is worse for the historian than it is for the mathematician: readers see a formula and just skip over it because they don't understand it or don't want to 
stop and puzzle it out before continuing, but readers see text laced with terms like "multinational", "capitalism", "accumulation of surpluses", "inalienable", "commodities", and "bourgeois" and, 
unless the terms are used sparingly, and in a way that makes their technical meaning clear (as opposed to their emotion-laden common meanings) they recoil in horror. Readers don't understand 
mathemetician's technical expressions (their formulae). Readers *misunderstand* political economists' technical expressions (words like those listed above) - which is a good deal worse.
172: I truly appreciate your suggestions. I will strive to improve my communication on the grounds you listed.
Now 172 *did* then take the opportunity to quote my comment in his own defence on various user talk pages, and (in my view) made more of it than was actually there - I went so far as to complain 
to him that he had quoted me out of context at one point - but I genuinely believe that he has learned a little from that exchange (and from some other, broadly similar, ones, both with me and with 
other contributors). He remains a prickly character but his prose is improving, and while he is certainly not as easy to work with as some, he can be amenable to evidence and reason. (As the 
history and talk of History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo shows.)
In summary, yes, 172 creates difficulties. But he also makes a very useful contribution to Wikipedia, and is not impossible to work with. He has moderated his initial anti-cooperative behaviour, and 
(I suspect) will learn to moderate it further as time goes by (not least in consequence of this present controversy).
Tony Wilson
(Tannin)
list@redhill.net.au