I was present, and to a certain extent responsible for Adam Carr's retreat
from Wikipedia. Here is the precipitating incident. It occured during
editing of [[Great Purge]]. I have been actively editing this article,
mostly puting reams of information into the article about how bad it was and
how unjustified. I was being regularly reverted and was happy to see Adam
Carr come along and from a similar perspective to mine added to the article.
[[User:Ruy Lopez]] inserted the following paragraph with the comment, "(The
Moscow Trials - other theories)":
"Some who think the trials were inherently fair, such as Molotov, concede
that some of the confessions contain unlikely statements. Molotov said there
may have been several reasons or motives that this can be attributed to -
one being if the handful who made doubtful confessions were trying to
undermine the Soviet Union and its government, then making dubious
statements within the confession would cast doubts on their trial. Molotov
postulated a defendant could invent a story that he collaborated with
foreign agents and party members to undermine the government, and then those
members would come under suspicion despite doing nothing, while the false
foreign collaboration charge would be believed as well. Thus, the Soviet
government was also the victim of false confessions. Nonetheless, he said
the evidence of mostly out-of-power Communist officials conspiring to make a
power grab during a moment of weakness in the upcoming war was there."
This paragraph, in the context of the article, follows a long explanation
that there was little or no ground for the purges.
Adam removed it, with the comment, "(this is now progessing towards being a
respectable article and this ridiculous stalinoid rubbish will not be
allowed)" [[User:Everyking]] put it back in with the comment, "(rv, i think
it's quite useful to include this pov in the article, don't see why it
wouldn't be). Adam then reverted with the comment, "(because it is a
pathetic attempt to drag absurd red herrings into a factual account of what
happened, and should not be tolerated by serious editors)".
I then reverted, modifying it somewhat with the comment, "(modify and
restore Stalinist perspective)":
"Some contemporary supporters of Stalin who think the trials were inherently
fair cite the statements of Molotov who while conceding that some of the
confessions contain unlikely statements, said there may have been several
reasons or motives that this can be attributed to - one being if the handful
who made doubtful confessions were trying to undermine the Soviet Union and
its government, then making dubious statements within the confession would
cast doubts on their trial. Molotov postulated a defendant could invent a
story that he collaborated with foreign agents and party members to
undermine the government, and then those members would come under suspicion
despite doing nothing, while the false foreign collaboration charge would be
believed as well. Thus, the Soviet government was in his view the victim of
false confessions. Nonetheless, he said the evidence of mostly out-of-power
Communist officials conspiring to make a power grab during a moment of
weakness in the upcoming war was there."
(This is not his original version, I added the attributing, "Some
contemporary supporters of Stalin....)
At this point Adam Carr went into a huff, making the comments: "(well if
apparently sensible editors think it is acceptable to include complete
rubbish like this in a serious historical article I am withdrawing from
it.)" and "(as a parting expression of my disgust, i am returning the
article to the crap state it was in before i began attempting to rescue
it.)"
He then left notes on my and Everyking's talk pages and replaced his own
pages with the note Robert references.
Fred
From: Robert <rkscience100(a)yahoo.com>
Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
Date: Sat, 9 Oct 2004 21:59:18 -0700 (PDT)
To: wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Loosing more of our best contributors
Adam Carr is now gone.
Evry loss like this is a huge blow to the project.
Adam writes:
I have decided to scale back substantially my involvement
in the Wikipedia project, since I no longer believe it is
capable in its present form of achieving its objectives. I
have removed from my watchlist about 300 articles relating
to historical and political subjects outside Australia. I
will no longer edit any such articles or respond to
requests to edit them or comment on them. My edits will be
confined to Australian topics, ancient history and gay
topics. When and if Wikipedia adopts a structure that
protects serious editors and prevents fools and fanatics
from sabotaging their work I will return to editing in
other areas. I will be posting a longer piece giving my
views on Wikipedia soon.
Adam 14:22, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC