[WikiEN-l] Re: Clutch is on a POV tirade

[Daniel Mayer]

On Monday 09 December 2002 08:23 am, wikien-l-request at wikipedia.org wrote:
> That approach does encourage laziness.  But sometimes it is so
> exhausting to defend an NPOV edit against partisans that it is tempting
> to put in bias, so the opposite side will be more inclined to meet
> somewhere in the middle.

Your edits were far from NPOV and you were the one trying to insert bias so 
stop crying wolf. Another example of your extreme bias;

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Fluoride&diff=468589&oldid=467526

You replaced a mention of the most major use of fluorides with;
  Fluorides are noted for their toxicity, 
  and have been sold in pill form as 
  extremely effective rodent and insect poisons.

Except for the rodent and extremely part this is true but this use is not as 
widespread or as important as the removed information about use in toothpaste 
and as an additive in water supplies. This gives an unbalanced representation 
of the ion. 

You went on;
  To retain their right to practice, various 
  dental associations require dentists to tell 
  clients that fluorides are harmless and beneficial 
  to the teeth. Dentists who say otherwise have their 
  licenses revoked. 

This statement, expressed as fact, gives an impression that there is a 
conspiracy to poison patients and dentists who don't follow suit get there 
licenses revoked. How very NPOV. I removed the above paragraph asking for 
substantiation for the claim and you never offered evidence.

> Take the current article on fluorine for instance.  It took no end of
> effort to get the statements about fluoride out of the fluorine article
> where they didn't belong; some folks insisted on linking fluoride with
> dental health in the fluorine article, without any of the important
> context that the fluoride article provides about the health risks of
> fluoride.

Bad example. The fluorine article is supposed to mention all uses for the 
element fluorine. Since the element fluorine in all fluorides then mention of 
the uses of fluorides should by all means be the fluorine article. The 
sentence you started that edit war over was; 

     The fluorine ion [[fluoride]] is used in 
     dental health care products and, 
     controversially, as an additive to 
     some drinking water supplies.

Six people, including myself and Rmhermen (who has done some work with 
fluoride), reinserted the above factual sentence after you kept on removing 
it. I got sick of the situation so I ended the edit war by placing the above 
sentence on the talk page and /temporarily/ removed it from the article.  

> The policy about "not deleting any information" really needs to be
> revisited.  I recommend rephrasing it as "don't delete any RELEVANT
> information".  This is an encyclopedia after all.  Have we lost our
> roots?  Remember Denis Diderot.
>
> Jonathan

The removed information is highly relevant. Just look at all the other element 
articles; almost all of them mention uses of compounds and ions of the 
element (many have compound sections that introduce the compounds and link to 
more extensive articles on them). Few elements have many uses in their pure 
non-ionic forms. That is why this is relevant.  

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

Karma Payment:
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Palladium/Temp&diff=0&oldid=471315
I would have been able to finish this element if I wasn't involved in 3 
different edit wars with Clutch on Sunday.