[WikiEN-l] Please, no more personal attacks

[Fred Bauder]

The Cuncator is concerned about the effect of a group of folks who share a
partisan point of view working together both to push that point of view and
as a block within Wikipedia's decision making process. Professional
qualifications and experience have nothing to do with it. Tannin, 172, and
Jtdirl exhibit a common pattern of partisan behavior, of left wing
historical revisionism, of deleting blocks of factual material that does not
meet their ideological criteria.

My method of dealing with a group like this is just to treat them for most
purposes as a single individual and accord them no more respect than I would
to any single individual with a couple of puppets dangling from his hands.

I distinctly remember a mob the members of which all had postgraduate
degrees engaging in infantile behavior during the Cultural Revolution. (They
thought Madam Mao was real cool, Of course after the Gang of Four was
arrested, a sudden case of collective amnesia set in). Being smart or
educated is not the issue, the problem is pushing a point of view agenda,
and playing politics within Wikipedia in pursuit of that agenda. Given the
past editing behavior of Tannin, 172, and Jtdirl I think that is what we can
expect in the future. A pattern of very ugly partisan behavior. I supported
banning Helga and certainly would never have considered her being a sysop. I
oppose left-wing historical revisionism for the same reasons I opposed
Helga's partisan efforts.

The holocaust was real, people who say it was real are telling the truth.
When I make a link to [[mass murder]] in an article on the [[communist
state]] I'm not making something up. The shame is on the folks who think
they can delete the link under some pretext. When I put a link to
[[Tiananmen Square]] in the aricle on [[China]] I'm not somehow a victim of
my inflated imagination. Those who would delete any mention of [[Tiananmen
Square]] from the article on [[China]] cover themselves with shame.

That said, as someone pointed out, being a sysop does not give you extra
power when you edit.  But under that logic Helga could very well be a sysop
in good standing at this point.

As to the title of this posting, "Please, no more personal attacks", it is
the viscious personal attacks these folks engaged in which created the issue
and opposition to them.

However, asking friends to work on an article like the [[industrial
revolution]]; gee, any of us ought to be able to ask folks whose work we
respect to work with us on any article.

The abuse comes in when anyone who happens to not accept the group product
tries to edit it and the whole bunch jumps on them. That would be
unacceptable and not worthy of respect.

Fred 

> From: "Tony Wilson" <list at redhill.net.au>
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 10:45:23 +1000
> To: "WikiEN" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Please, no more personal attacks
> 
> The Cunctator wrote:
> 
>> I'm just hoping Wikipedia doesn't significantly factionalize--or rather,
>> stays in factions of one. I'm mildly disturbed by the way 172 invited
>> particular people to work on an entry ("Wanted: Tannin, Sluberstien, and
>> Jtdirl")http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Industrial_Revolutio
>> n&action=history
>> because I don't see that kind of behavior boding well for the future.
> 
> Knock it off, Cunc.
> 
> That's quite uncalled for, and I'm getting very tired of your
> relentless sniping on this list. If you had bothered to THINK about it
> for a momemt, you might have realised that the three people named were
> named for a good and obvious reason:
> 
> I have a degree in that field and (before I went into business) used to
> teach it at tertiary level.
> 
> Slrubenstein can also be presumed to have formal qualifications in the
> field (doubtless higher ones than mine) as he too teaches it at
> tertiary level
> 
> Jtdirl has a phD in the field, and teaches it.
> 
> You have a problem with professional expertise? Or are you just making
> trouble?
> 
> 
> 
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