Hmmm. I can see both sides of this. Of course, DW has been undiplomatic, but on the other side, putting a country of origin next to a person's details sometimes makes sense and sometimes it doesn't. I haven't read DW's reasoning on this (or Zoe's) but nation-states were born with the Treaty of Westphalia (1648). Prior to that, the concept of countries was quite fluid. City-states were more often the norm (in areas that had advanced beyond tribalism).
If no one else want's to do it, I'll try reasoning with DW. Let me know.
M Carling
On Mon, 27 Jan 2003, james duffy wrote:
It may just be a once off, but it is worth keeping an eye out for. One of DW's many arguments with Zoe rested her (correct) decision to put in a country of orgin next to a person's details. He screamed blue murder and obscenities about this. At 5.06am GMT (Monday, Jan 27) DW 'doctored' an article on George Washington to add in the word ''British'' to describe the first US president, with a note that said
''inserting nationality as per rules assertedrepeatedly by Zoe . . . DW''
Hopefully it is a rather childish once off bit of vandalism, but it is worth keeping an eye out just in case. Being rude, obnoxious and offensive is one thing (apparently I'm now a 'phoney', so he has obviously reached P in his dictionary!) but deliberately tampering with articles out of spite is a more serious matter. If that is his standard of behaviour, does Wiki really need DW? Has the time come for a ban, even a short one, to bring him to his senses.
JT
From: Lee Pilich pilich@btopenworld.com Reply-To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] DW continues to win friends Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2003 01:08:02 +0000
At 16:47 25/01/2003 -0800, you wrote:
Check out my talk page. Not only has DW attacked me as a moron, but he has specifically mentioned Jtdirl and and Deb as morons. And you've already seen what he's had to say about Magnus Manske. And then check out [[Wikipedia talk:Tokerboy's Law]] and [[Talk:Georges Seurat]].
Zoe
Yes, I'm afraid things have got to the stage where I simply don't edit DW's contributions for fear of getting into a big and stupid and pointless argument with him (I really commend Zoe for taking him on, because it's a completely unenviable task). He writes some pretty good biographies (although they are *pure* biography - he'll tell you where a poet studied and what she had for breakfast in 1917, but won't tell you much about her poems), but I tend to think that he's more trouble than he's worth. I've completely lost my rag with him a couple of times, which I'm not proud of, but he does have this tremendous knack of getting up people's noses.
I'm not saying we should ban him, but it would be nice if somebody who doesn't hate him as much as I do and who maybe hasn't had dealings with him before could have a go at asking him to be polite, consider that the 'pedia is a work in progress, that he doesn't "own" the pages he writes, and that sort of thing. I'm really worried that he's going to drive new users away (and maybe some old ones as well).
Good luck to anybody who tries to talk to him.
lp (camembert)
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