On Fri, Mar 05, 2004 at 09:39:21AM -0800, wikien-l-request@Wikipedia.org wrote:

For the problem to subside, Pakaran, RickK, Adam Carr, PMA, Very Verily, Tim Startling, and Robert Merkel (the most virulent critics of our Red user) need to treat him with respect (or at least a facade of respect for the sake of cooperation), allowing Lance/Hector/Riohard to meet his critics at least halfway.

The only "red faction" user that I have personally criticised, as far as I can recall, is you.

BTW, I know that a few cynics would dismiss these comments, accusing me of a leftist agenda. If these charges crop up, I refer to the October 2003 mailing list, where I was the most ardent critic of banning [[User:RK]]. Recently, I also remarked to [[User:G-Man]] that we desperately lack elderly contributors (giving us Gen-X and Baby Boom biases). I also noted the need to promote more non-Western admins a while ago.

My problem with "red faction" users (and you are the only one I can remember tangling with more than once), is very simple. The group systematically mischaracterise facts and omit others to give uniformly favourable impressions of various left-wing despots like Stalin and Kim Jong-Il. Secondly, trying to alter the article to point out the atrocities committed on their watch, as well as pointing out their achievements, if any, is like trying to pull out one's own teeth with tweezers, as they are rarely prepared to concede that anything is the subject's fault, and continually revert and challenge edits, and are impossible to engage in debate on talk pages. They are essentially unable to see any other perspective. If they do concede that some bad things happened on this person's watch, It's always the system's fault, or the West's fault, the Soviets' fault... Trying to treat such users with respect ends up with the article remaining unchanged, and terrible. Hence, frustration builds up and civility tends to go away after dealing with enough of this crap.

As far as my own clashes with "the red faction", I invite readers to have a look around [[Kim Jong-Il]]'s edit history and talk page, for instance, and make up their own minds. Contrast with, say, [[Deng Xiaoping]], which cunningly buries the Tiananmen Square protests in such a way that a reader not already familiar with the subject would miss it.