[WikiEN-l] Response to Bryan Derken
Abe Sokolov
abesokolov at hotmail.com
Sun Jun 6 09:36:12 UTC 2004
Bryan Derksen:
Speaking of rudeness, aside from berating me on the mailing list due to one
single disagreement, you came out of nowhere on [[Talk:Origins of the
American Civil War]] dismissing the article division as "ugly" and
"fragile," proclaiming that you were going to "better organize" [the
article] while offering no specifics. Yet, weeks earlier Mav, AlexS, Sj, and
I had agreed on that very same division, which was arranged incidentally not
by me but by Sj. I called it "excellent" and perhaps a cure to for all "long
pages" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Longpages). AlexS called it a
"brilliant job" (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Origins_of_the_American_Civil_War/Archive_1).
Mav simply stated that he was "OK with this format." So, was it unreasonable
for me to ask you to review the past discussion on the complex issue that
you were attempting to bring up? I think not.
Furthermore, your desire to "create better page titles" made no sense at
all. You failed to understand that these weren't four separate articles but
rather a single article consisting of four pages.
Wanting you to be aware of the reasons for which a number of users had
opposed the kind of division that you were proposing (a New
Imperialism-style division/series) isn't rude. Instead, making sure that
everyone's on the same page-- what I was attempting to do-- is usually
considered helpful.
You later admitted, "Yeah, that New Imperialism thing looks like the general
sort of idea I was proposing." However, you failed to respond to comments by
both Sj and me explaining the complications of undergoing just a drastic
restructuring of the article. In particular, you never responded to the
following comments by Sj:
Secondly, I agree that for a "NI-style" summary to work, '''much more'''
content is needed -- and I hope that someday that content appears. (Once
there are >200kb of content on the origins of the Civil War, something
better than 10 long sequential pages will be necessary just to make sense of
it all!) For now, 3 or 4 sequential pages - for purely technical reasons -
sounds like an acceptable idea (NB: it's possible to have a 30-page document
with ''one title''; that is impossible on this wiki, alas). I'm going to go
ahead and take a stab at breaking it up, just as an exercise in being bold,
and b/c I want to get this off the 'featured status disputed' list; I won't
object if one of you reverts me and tries a different division.
[[User:Sj|+sj]][[User Talk:Sj|+]] 05:29, 2004 Mar 27 (UTC)
BTW, I'm not the only one who was happy with the article as it is. Note,
e.g., this comment on the talk page:
"I am in my first year teaching American history at the high school level,
and I thought this article was incredibly helpful, both to me and to my
students. Too often, websites or online encyclopedias provide only a cursory
overview of the Civil War, or present the lead-up to the conflict as an
inevitable polarisation of 'Slavery v. Anti-Slavery' and 'States Rights v.
Federalism'. Certainly these themes are central to the conflict, but they
were neither inevitable nor straightforward - nor did they take on the moral
overtones people tend to give them today. This article avoids those pitfalls
- thanks."
See also "Wikipedia for Journalists" by Sree Sreenivasan, Columbia Professor
& Poynter Visiting Professor
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=32&aid=62126 . An excerpt reads, "So
far, the effort has created numerous reference-quality articles as wide
ranging as the Hutton Inquiry, algorithms, social history of the piano,
origins of the American Civil War, and severe acute respiratory syndrome. As
its quality has improved, news publications have increasingly cited
Wikipedia on subjects..."
But considering the lynch mob atmosphere of this mailing list, I suppose
that writing this article is more evidence in favor of a ban, right?
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