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