From: Viajero viajero@quilombo.nl Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Can we ban 172 now? And VV too! Date: Fri, 04 Jun 2004 13:35:08 +0300

Too much of the current discussion is centered on 172's alleged shortcomings and not enough on his abilities and contributions.

There is, IMO, not a single other contributor to Wikipedia who has a similar grasp of the Big Picture; no one else has his resources and ability to tackle these big, overarching topics like New Imperialism; no one else has his virtually encyclopedic knowledge of Third World politics and social movements. Abe is not interested the personification of history, trite Big Man bedtime stories, he is interested in analyzing complex, long-term trends in economic and social development, something far more difficult but far more rewarding. Without these kinds of articles, we are basically just a bunch of stamp collectors.

I have to take issue with this. The subject under discussion at Requests for Comment and Requests for Arbitration is 172 and VV's alleged incivility and edit-warring. The fact that 172 can write good articles is irrelevant to this. If he writes good articles but is unable to work productively with other wiki editors, then he should be writing for something other than a wiki project.

I also think that much of the recent traffic on this list about POV issues in his articles is irrelevant to arbitration or banning, although it arguably merits discussion separately.

-Nat Krause (the eponymous user)

_________________________________________________________________ Get fast, reliable Internet access with MSN 9 Dial-up – now 3 months FREE! http://join.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200361ave/direct/01/