[WikiEN-l] Re: Can we ban 172 now? And VV too!

[Sheldon Rampton]

Stan Shebs wrote:

>Because there's no possible excuse for personal attacks. It doesn't
>matter how strongly you feel about the issue, your personal history,
>nothing.

The people who think that Abe *initiated* personal attacks should 
take another look at the title of this thread. This entire discussion 
is taking place in the context of an attack on Abe in which a 
proposal is on the table to ban him. Moreover, the discussion here 
has been mean-spirited and unfair. Abe posted the text of an article 
he wrote about the failings of the Soviet economy. I read the 
article, and I could see that it contained several clear, strong 
criticisms of Stalinist policies that hurt the economy. Nevertheless, 
Fred and others responded to the article by waxing nasty and 
sarcastic. They cherry-picked phrases out of the article that made it 
sound like Abe was blaming workers for poor productivity, and then 
threw in gratuitous accusations of being an apologist for dictators 
because in their opinion Fred's article didn't say enough about the 
Soviet gulags. As far as I can see, Fred is the one who initiated 
this attack, and he did it dishonestly. He has a different POV than 
Abe, and he's trying to resolve it by having him banned and by 
warring about the content of his article on this listserv.

Sure, Abe shouldn't have called Fred "senile," but in the overall 
context of nasty discourse that has characterized this thread, I 
don't think Abe's comment stands out as being more egregious than the 
insults that have been thrown his way.

--Sheldon Rampton