On Oct 26, 2012, at 6:48 PM, Nathan wrote:
On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 8:50 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
John, I want to say -- and I suspect many others here agree -- this is absolutely an appropriate list to bring this up on, and I'm glad you did.
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That's all well and good, except it ignores the very good reasons why any discussion of Mr. Jackson's specific circumstances should remain on-wiki. In a list such as wikipedia-l or wikien-l etc., his comments are quite unlikely to encounter anyone with expertise in his field. Without such expertise, we might not see past the quite scientific-sounding language he uses to discover the fact that his "book" is self-published on Amazon. We might not be aware that he is the host and former host of a multitude of blogs that appear to serve as the only public forum for his theories, which seemingly have found minimal or no acceptance in academia.
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Nathan
Nathan, your point is well taken. However, I don't think it reveals anything "wrong" with posting to this list. After all, nobody on this list has deferred to John's expertise or endorsed the idea that his version of the article should be approved; and even if we did, it wouldn't be worth much (off-wiki) in establishing consensus to change the article.
Much as I appreciate your point, I think it's worthwhile to be gracious about the forum people choose to engage in. Wikipedia is an impenetrable maze even for many experienced contributors. I think the various responses posted here illustrate that this is a perfectly good venue for having this discussion, even if it isn't ideal for meeting some of John's objectives.
John had frustrations and questions about Wikipedia's policies and culture; from where I sit, that's fair game for an email list about Wikipedia.
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]