bryan.derksen at shaw.ca wrote: "So it's not surprising that I would use a lot of "character flaw"-type language and that my posting wouldn't be particularly constructive as far as the debate over the article itself is concerned, since the subject I was focusing on was (my opinion of) character." I did not get a good first impression of your editing style based on my experiences in that specific encounter either. You were utterly unengaged with the narrative and the historical aspects of the article. You only seemed concerned about shuffling around text, titles, series boxes, pages, and the like. But did you stop to figure other whether you knew what you were doing? Perhaps I should've spent more time briefing you on all the complications that would arise from your proposals instead of hoping that you'd figure this out on your own after reviewing the talk page discussions and reading the article. Still, do you expect everything to be spoon fed? On that note, reconsider this point from an earlier posting: "Notice that as the reader moves down the page, the narrative builds on points already established in the text. Unless someone rewrote and significantly expanded each section of the article, Bryan's proposals would've left the individual components of the series superficial at best and incoherent at worst." To illustrate this (and the dangers of your impatient approach to reorganizing articles on major historical topics), I copied and pasted onto this e-mail below a portion text taken from the section "The internal structure and character of the Republican Party." I noted in brackets all the points that would be unclear if this section were to become a self-standing article (like all sections, the prose of this particular section was tailored to the placement of the section within the narrative). Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_American_Civil_War_%283/4%29#Th… : "As the Democrats were grappling with their own troubles [What troubles?], radicals in the Republican party [Who are the "radicals?"] fought against the idea of "non-extension" [What's "non-extension?"] and fought to keep the focus on the issue of slavery in the West [What issue of slavery in the West? What contention?], which allowed them to mobilize a great deal of popular support [Why is this the case?], at the focal point of political discourse. Chase [Who's Chase?] wrote Sumner [Who's Sumner?] that if the conservatives succeeded [Who? Conservative relative to whom?], it might be necessary to recreate the Free Soil party [What's the Free Soil Party?]. He was also particularly disturbed by the tendency of many Republicans to eschew moral attacks on slavery for political and economic arguments [Why?]. As a caveat, it is important to note that the controversy over slavery in the West was still not creating a fixation on the issue of slavery. Although the old restraints on the sectional tensions were being eroded with the rapid extension of mass politics and mass democracy in the North [How so?], the perpetuation of conflict over the issue of slavery in the West still required the efforts of certain Democrats in the South and radical Republican politicians in the North [What efforts?]. They had to ensure that the sectional conflict would remain at the center of the political debate. William Seward [Again, who's Seward?], in fact, contemplated this potential as far back as the 1840s, when the Democrats were the nation's majority party, usually controlling Congress, the presidency, and many state offices. At the time, the country's institutional structure and party system allowed slaveholders to prevail in more and more of the nation's territories and to garner a great deal of influence over national policy [Examples illustrating this?]. With growing popular discontent with the unwillingness of many Democratic leaders to take a stand against slavery [Taking what forms?], and growing consciousness of the party's increasingly pro-Southern stance [Pro-Southern in what ways?], Seward became convinced that the only way for the party to counteract the Democrats' strong monopoly of the rhetoric of democracy and equality was for the Whigs to embrace anti-slavery as a party platform." This should make it clear your proposals would require every single section of the article to be rewritten, expanded, and recontextualized significantly. (BTW, who's going to do that? I don't want to. I doubt that Mav does; he wants less text-- not more text. Are you? If so, reorganization comes with rewriting—and expanding—the entire entry) This is not as easy as cut/paste, designing new boxes, and moving pages. bryan.derksen at shaw.ca wrote: "But my main concern is still whether you plan to continue using the threat of edit wars in that discussion. Apologies don't matter much if the basic problem remains unresolved." I'm not at all sorry about that comment. You're just taking it the wrong way. Right now, I oppose your proposals just as much as you support them; the threat of an edit war is always implicit whenever this is the case between two editors. My only crime there might be speaking an esoteric truth. Anyway, all I meant was be patient (thus, adding a note about why you might want to be patient) and continue negotiating. This doesn't mean that I'm not listening. -172 _________________________________________________________________ Getting married? 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