Well, that seems like a good way to compromise. It doesn't soft-pedal anything, but it gets us out of the business of making a potentially controversial judgment.
Jimbo, I know you like compromise, but I generally prefer consistency. If we do this in this article, we should use a phrase such as "is universally regarded as" in any sentence that falls into the same class, i.e. makes a value statement about a person that the majority sees as negative, but which is nevertheless not disputed. Is this a policy you would want?
I don't know must about Wagner's anti-semitism (though I don't doubt it), so I don't know if anyone disputes it. Would Wagner have disputed it?
Hard to tell. Perhaps he would have called himself "anti-Jewish". I have not read any of the countless books about Wagner (I just got involved after the edit-war with Clutch broke out), but the summaries I have found of even the more revisionist books of which there are plenty state something like "Wagner was an anti-Semite, there can be no doubt about it. But .."
Do you want sysop access, Erik? You should have it.
"I'm just not ready for that kind of commitment" ;-). I think it's good for some of the more involved people to keep an eye on how it looks from down here instead of up there, if you know what I mean.
Regards,
Erik