[Foundation-l] Fwd: Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

[Peter Damian]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Nathan" <nawrich at gmail.com>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, October 04, 2010 4:05 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?



>
> Your own history, Peter, proves that you are incorrect; you are,
> yourself, an example of an expert who has been, at times, aggressively
> belligerent. I know you don't want to bring up your own history in
> this thread,  but it's a simple fact that professional experts are not
> always able to edit collaboratively and/or with an acceptably neutral
> point of view.
>
> Nathan

As you say I would prefer you didn't bring it up.  For the record, I have 
always tried to edit neutrally.  If you ask any of the specialist editors 
who were on the philosophy project they will vouch for this.  Here is one of 
them blogging about it

http://www.cognitive-edge.com/blogs/dave/2008/09/wikipedia_dont_offend_the_mast.php

"I will confess to feeling slightly disappointed with Wikipedia today.  We 
have one very good editor, who has done massive and detailed work over the 
years on various philosophy and history pages.  Recently he has also been 
tackling pseudo-science pages such as that on NLP.  He is also passionate 
about removing free propaganda for pederasts.  He is a volatile, passionate 
and highly intelligent character, just the sort of person WIkipedia needs. 
However he has managed to offend a member of Arbcom (the masters of the 
universe in Wikipedia).  Now the nature of the offense is minor compared 
with the sort of thing that editors dish out daily without punishment. 
However if you hit the inner circle (I almost said cabal then), you are 
treated differently. "

I also took "History of Logic" to FA, working very well with people like 
Sandy Georgia and Tony, only to be blocked towards the end of the process. 
My quarrel has always been with the administration and with the governance 
of Wikipedia.  Once I was blocked simply for nominating an article for 
deletion (a successful deletion, may I add).  But this is irrelevant to the 
present issue.  My quarrel with the adminstration of Wikipedia is a separate 
matter and not to do with this.