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

[Stan Shebs]

Abe Sokolov wrote:

>
> (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.
>
Except, of course, for the part of it that was written by other
people and that you collected from Berlin Airlift and redirected,
after the expected couple rounds of reversion vs Kingturtle. I note
that your addition to that one contains a bunch of creative excuses
justifying the Soviet use of Berlin civilians as hostages, with no
hint that anyone might possibly consider blockading a city an
inhuman act.

Also, the external link on the page points out that the British were
already flying in supplies by the time Truman made his decision, plus
there was at least one discusion with the British about what to do, so
the "consulting no one else but just several cabinet members" line is
a perfect example of the kind of slant I was talking about - while it
may be true that Truman personally only talked to a few people, it was
not a secret dead-of-night-type decision. I believe there was also a
public outcry to "do something" at the time, so Truman knew that it
would be politically popular in the US; he didn't have to make up
stories about WMDs in Berlin (oops, wrong context :-) ).

The "publicity stunt" line I referred is from an old version of a
Cold War article anyway.

I could easily come up with hundreds more examples like this, but
in the end, WP isn't paying me enough to get into endless arguments
that are ultimately pointless because of your reverting habit.

>
> 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).
>
I'm not saying you haven't done good stuff, but that's not an excuse
for aggressively reverting people who try to fix articles.

> 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.

Jimbo was puzzled, I helped fill him in on a situation that he
probably would have been just as happy knowing nothing about.
When non-experts can smell the fishiness, that should be a pretty
strong hint.

Stan