Thanks to all for your thoughtful responses. Answering several at once:
No, I didn't include the edit in question because my post on this list was
about procedure and policy being violated, rather than about content. If
policy had been followed, the content issue may have worked itself out.
I wasn't trying to hide anything; I figured that anyone interested could
follow the link I provided. I will address the content issue below.
As for the 3-revert rule, my own reverts were actually undoing of
unexplained reverts by others. Why were those others not blocked as well?
Furthermore, their reverts were *deletion* of content, which is
discouraged in about a thousand places on various policy pages, while my
reversion is an (encouraged) addition (one which is more factual than you
may think-- see below).
I'm perfectly willing to discuss the content on the talk page. The ones
who were reverting my edit did not seem to be so willing. They merely
wrote demeaning comments and called my addition "nonsense" and
"vandalism", which it clearly is not; they also never responded to the
points I made, but rather repeated their "vandalism" comments. If we
can't communicate on this basic level, what chance is there of working
anything out in discussion? (I browsed a few more pages and found that
the worst violator yesterday (Texture) has a pattern of doing this with
other people, and is pretty blatant about inserting his POV into articles.
Bafflingly, I found out s/he is a sysop!) In any case, it's true that I
did not start a discussion on the talk page, but neither did anyone else.
The "Strike 3 bucko" comment is on the page listing blocked IP addresses.
Or rather, it was, but I've been unblocked now (thanks Charles).
In trying to resolve this, I browsed many Wikipedia pages yesterday about
various policy, Wikiquette, editing guidelines, etc. Each of these pages
I browsed, it seemed I could find several more examples of how my
detractors were violating these things-- probably a dozen or more
violations in all. And I, even as a newbie here, was getting it pretty
much right. Then I found out that the two worst violators (Texture and
Oberiko) were sysops! What does that say? How did that happen?
In any system, those who are given power should be able to correctly use
it, rather than just getting it because they "earned" it (though that may
be part of it too). We're not the Mexican police force here, or we don't
want to be, anyway.
Fred said:
If adding it was Point of View, so was removing it.
Thank you, Fred. That's what I'm saying here, that the others are bound
by the same editing policies as me, regardless of their sysop status.
Besides just the plain rudeness, and unconstructiveness.
Stormie's post just came through-- Stormie, don't misrepresent it. Some
of your post is answered above, but for what isn't: I did not ignore the
comments on my talk page, though I didn't see the last one before I was
banned. The first ones were insults toward me, and my response to Texture
was firmly-worded, but hardly a "mischievous attack"-- it was modeled on
what Texture said to me, to illustrate the symmetry of the situation. In
any case, he avoided answering my points and merely repeated his usual
"vandalism" mantra. As for my not discussing it, it was Texture, Oberiko,
and Jiang who seemed to not want to discuss it. Further still, what I
added was less POV than what those others wanted. Why aren't you applying
your complaints to the others? Double standards, maybe?
----------
Now, about that content, for anyone interested. If you're not, thanks for
reading, and you can skip the rest. On the page about Ronald Reagan, I
changed the first below to the second:
"Yet, President Reagan's tenure marked a time of economic prosperity for
the United States."
"Yet, President Reagan's tenure marked a time of economic prosperity for
the United States, at least for the wealthy."
I see the first as a broad generalization that is untrue, or at least very
controversial. I see my addition as a clarification that makes it closer
to the truth. Reagan's tenure was prosperous only if you don't count the
lower classes as being part of the US. Not just the poor, but many in the
middle class too.
In boolean terms, note that anytime the first statement is true, the
second is true; thus, my addition can only make it more truthful, not
less. We all agree the 1980's were good for the wealthy, but there is
deep and bitter controversy over whether that was true for the poor and
working class. Thus, my new sentence affirms what we agree on, and leaves
what we disagree on open to question (I *don't* say it *only* helped the
wealthy; I just say it *at least* helped the wealthy). The 1980's were
certainly good for investors and business owners-- anyone who had money
made more money. You may say that many of the middle class own stocks
(actually not so much in the 1980's), but that's only a small fraction of
stocks owned by the most wealthy. A more accurate version of my statement
may therefore be "Reagan's tenure was prosperous to citizens, in rough
proportion to how much money they had." Anytime you have an equation like
that, the overwhelming bulk of the wealth, and thus benefit, is held by a
relative few.
If you're an IT worker, don't forget that we tend to make a lot more money
than others, so we can't really extend our own wealth experiences to the
rest of the middle class. People do it anyway, I know.
Here's evidence of hard times in the 1980's: I was in Houston from 1983
to 1990. For most of that time, this fourth-largest US city was very
economically depressed. You could drive down most streets in most
neighborhoods and see "for rent" signs on every block. The job market was
very tough, similar to what we've had since 2001.
Other factors in the 1980's made it unprosperous for the lower classes.
Much social spending was cut. The prison population exploded, especially
for minorities. I bet it wasn't for white-collar crimes, either. (On a
tangent, did you know that 1 out of 75 US males is now in prison? That
means that US males spend an average of a year in prison during their
lives. For black males, it's more like 3 years.)
So, yeah, most of this probably belongs on the Reagan talk page, if a
discussion were to start there.
Thanks for reading this far!
Cheers,
James