Summary style (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Response to Bryan Derken)

[Abe Sokolov]

bryan.derksen at shaw.ca wrote:
"So it's not surprising that I would use a lot of "character flaw"-type 
language and that my posting wouldn't be particularly constructive as far as 
the debate over the article itself is concerned, since the subject I was 
focusing on was (my opinion of) character."

I did not get a good first impression of your editing style based on my 
experiences in that specific encounter either. You were utterly unengaged 
with the narrative and the historical aspects of the article. You only 
seemed concerned about shuffling around text, titles, series boxes, pages, 
and the like. But did you stop to figure other whether you knew what you 
were doing?

Perhaps I should've spent more time briefing you on all the complications 
that would arise from your proposals instead of hoping that you'd figure 
this out on your own after reviewing the talk page discussions and reading 
the article. Still, do you expect everything to be spoon fed?

On that note, reconsider this point from an earlier posting:

"Notice that as the reader moves down the page, the narrative builds on 
points already established in the text. Unless someone rewrote and 
significantly expanded each section of the article, Bryan's proposals 
would've left the individual components of the series superficial at best 
and incoherent at worst."

To illustrate this (and the dangers of your impatient approach to 
reorganizing articles on major historical topics), I copied and pasted onto 
this e-mail below a portion text taken from the section "The internal 
structure and character of the Republican Party." I noted in brackets all 
the points that would be unclear if this section were to become a 
self-standing article (like all sections, the prose of this particular 
section was tailored to the placement of the section within the narrative).

Taken from 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_American_Civil_War_%283/4%29#The_internal_structure_and_character_of_the_Republican_Party 
:

"As the Democrats were grappling with their own troubles [What troubles?], 
radicals in the Republican party [Who are the "radicals?"] fought against 
the idea of "non-extension" [What's "non-extension?"] and fought to keep the 
focus on the issue of slavery in the West [What issue of slavery in the 
West? What contention?], which allowed them to mobilize a great deal of 
popular support [Why is this the case?], at the focal point of political 
discourse. Chase [Who's Chase?] wrote Sumner [Who's Sumner?] that if the 
conservatives succeeded [Who? Conservative relative to whom?], it might be 
necessary to recreate the Free Soil party [What's the Free Soil Party?]. He 
was also particularly disturbed by the tendency of many Republicans to 
eschew moral attacks on slavery for political and economic arguments [Why?].

As a caveat, it is important to note that the controversy over slavery in 
the West was still not creating a fixation on the issue of slavery. Although 
the old restraints on the sectional tensions were being eroded with the 
rapid extension of mass politics and mass democracy in the North [How so?], 
the perpetuation of conflict over the issue of slavery in the West still 
required the efforts of certain Democrats in the South and radical 
Republican politicians in the North [What efforts?]. They had to ensure that 
the sectional conflict would remain at the center of the political debate.

William Seward [Again, who's Seward?], in fact, contemplated this potential 
as far back as the 1840s, when the Democrats were the nation's majority 
party, usually controlling Congress, the presidency, and many state offices. 
At the time, the country's institutional structure and party system allowed 
slaveholders to prevail in more and more of the nation's territories and to 
garner a great deal of influence over national policy [Examples illustrating 
this?]. With growing popular discontent with the unwillingness of many 
Democratic leaders to take a stand against slavery [Taking what forms?], and 
growing consciousness of the party's increasingly pro-Southern stance 
[Pro-Southern in what ways?], Seward became convinced that the only way for 
the party to counteract the Democrats' strong monopoly of the rhetoric of 
democracy and equality was for the Whigs to embrace anti-slavery as a party 
platform."

This should make it clear your proposals would require every single section 
of the article to be rewritten, expanded, and recontextualized 
significantly. (BTW, who's going to do that? I don't want to. I doubt that 
Mav does; he wants less text-- not more text. Are you? If so, reorganization 
comes with rewriting—and expanding—the entire entry) This is not as easy as 
cut/paste, designing new boxes, and moving pages.

bryan.derksen at shaw.ca wrote:
"But my main concern is still whether you plan to continue using the threat 
of edit wars in that discussion. Apologies don't matter much if the basic 
problem remains unresolved."

I'm not at all sorry about that comment. You're just taking it the wrong 
way. Right now, I oppose your proposals just as much as you support them; 
the threat of an edit war is always implicit whenever this is the case 
between two editors. My only crime there might be speaking an esoteric 
truth. Anyway, all I meant was be patient (thus, adding a note about why you 
might want to be patient) and continue negotiating. This doesn't mean that 
I'm not listening.

-172

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