[WikiEN-l] 172--what happened

[daniwo59 at aol.com]

I am not going to justify protecting the page. Rather, I will relate my perspective as to what happened. 

In the morning, there was an email to the list saying that 172 has returned and that we should be wary of his edits. Upon opening Wikipedia, I saw that he had just removed chunks of text from the Mugabe article. His edits were clearly POV. For example, the article said that he had killed political opponents, and he changed "killed" to "suppressed." I reverted that (and this was the source of my comment "Call a spade a spade.") He also removed any text that was critical of Mugabe. I restored the text, and he removed it again. This seesawing went on for quite some time, with him commenting that the text wasn't worthwhile. (The history shows this). Rather than spend another hour reverting back and forth, I protected the page and informed the list. It was immediately unprotected, and 172 began making charges of imperialism, etc. and saying that the criticisms of Mugabe were unfounded and should be removed. He also began adding text to the article, which Eric Moller pointed out was plagiarized. As the morning progressed, Eric, Jtdirl, and myself were going back and forth restoring texts that 172 decided to delete because they did not meet his POV. The whole thing went on for over four hours. 

I am not justifying the original block. I simply regarded it as a way of stopping a form of vandalism--and yes, I believe that forcing POV on an article and erasing text because it does not conform to a particular POV is a form of vandalism. I also added material to counter claims that 172 made. Frankly, I don't care if they are in or not. I do, however, have a problem with taking an individual who is obviously controversial and removing all material that sheds light on the background to the controversy. I also have a problem with plagiarism, and expect more from someone who claims to have a PhD in history with a field of specialization in that field. 

Danny