[WikiEN-l] Russian constitutional crisis of 1993 (some responses)

[Abe Sokolov]

shebs at apple.com wrote:

I have indeed compared your wording with the purported sources
(not on this article, but on others that we have discussed
previously), and there are significant differences.

Stan Shebs claims that there is a discrepancy between my work on Wikipedia 
and my sources, yet he insults the intelligence of mailing list readers by 
only offering this as evidence, "For instance, there was the episode where 
Somoza was a dictator but Stalin was not, and then
where the Berlin Airlift was mainly a publicity stunt." [I've made over 
10,000 edits to Wikipedia, so it's easy for someone with an ax to grind to 
cherry-pick examples and then throw in gratuitous accusations]

(1) Stan Sheb's disingenuous claims of bias on the Berlin blockade and 
airlift are emphatically refuted by Wikipedia's article on the Berlin 
blockade (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Blockade), which I wrote.

(2) I shy away from the term "dictator" altogether on Wikipedia (see, e.g., 
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Fidel_Castro&diff=4721758&oldid=4721669) 
I also changed the reference to Pinochet as a "dictator" to "military ruler" 
on the in the news box on the main page several days ago. Yet, this matter 
is more complicated than Stan Shebs is making it out to be (as usual). 
Notice the following conversation taken from Talk:Fidel Castro:

::Not exactly. Dictator is not a matter of opinion, it's a matter of fact, 
so it's not POV (though some try to twist the facts). While Batista is 
called a dictator in Britannica, BSE and probably other encyclopedias, Fidel 
is not. Fidel is not a dictator, because no matter how popular he is, he 
doesn't rule Cuba, the party  does (and people too). Batista, on the other 
hand, was clearly a dictator (the second time he was in power) because of 
the way he ruled. So I think we should call Batista a dictator, but not do 
the same for Fidel. [[User:Paranoid|Paranoid]] 06:56, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
:::Good point, Paranoid. Cuba is a single party state, not a personalistic 
regime. (Not to say that this is mutually exclusive. Ceausescu's Romania and 
North Korea, where the power of the party was strongly subverted by the 
leader, are considered "sultanistic" and "personalistic" regimes by a number 
of prominent comparativists, e.g., Linz and Stepan, who have drawn from Max 
Weber's concept of personalized power in a "sultanism.") However, many 
Wikipedians aren't going to grasp these nuances, and will be suspicious that 
the term is being applied arbitrarily. So, it's best to just shy away from 
the term altogether, even in obvious cases, like the Somozas, Idi Amin, Papa 
Doc and Baby Doc, Bokassa, Saddam Hussein, Mobutu, etc. [[User:172|172]] 
07:38, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps I might have slipped up a few times and referred to the "obvious 
cases" (personalistic leaders) as dictators over the past year and a half 
that I've been working on Wikipedia. Fair-minded users will put this in 
context, tough, and note my substantial contributions to this site; note 
that my articles tend to make the best use of references on Wikipedia (e.g., 
history of post-Soviet Russia has over 30); and note that I have garnered 
praise even from fair-minded, conservative U.S. users for being able to 
write neutrally on difficult, controversial topics (e.g., Franco-U.S. 
relations).

In close, Stan is only bringing up these red herrings to distract everyone 
from the real issue. He launched into a personal attack against me over my 
work on Russian constitutional crisis of 1993 on the mailing list with no 
evidence, no command of the facts, and no inclination to do any reading or 
check the list of sources I added to the article. Once again, his 
unwarranted defamation is a dishonor only to him, not to me.

-172

_________________________________________________________________
Don’t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! 
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/