On 9/9/06, Jason Potkanski <electrawn(a)electrawn.com> wrote:
Greetings, Electrawn here. I think this is a perfect
opportunity to
introduce myself since I am being flamed on the list here without a proper
invite
I don't feel that I've flamed you, but I have raised questions (in
what was, I admit, a rather strident tone) about your judgement and
your interpretation of policy, which is a different thing entirely and
I'm sorry if I offended you. In my original message I chose not to
identify users by name to avoid this becoming a debate about
particular personalities. I also chose not to be specific about what
articles I was referring to as I was interested in discussing the
broader issues affecting all articles instead of the minutiae of a
particular article, which belongs on that article's talk page.
Instead, you've chosen to personally attack me and drag out the
details of a single article, neither of which is particularly
productive here.
I do want to clear up some of your misstatements regarding the Jeff
Gannon matter. I am not "in arbitration" regarding this matter, or in
anything at all except in a dispute with another user (more about him
in a minute). An op-ed piece (one which I personally haven't read and
have not proposed using for a source) was not the source for calling
Gannon a prostitute, but was merely one of many mainstream media
sources presented by multiple editors as substantiating the fact that
Gannon advertised his sexual services. The "repeated reversions" I
have made were reverting that user who wished to remove all mention of
this from every WP article that mentioned Gannon.
And thank you for mentioning the issue of the Southern Voice, which is
perhaps the most appalling of your policy interpretations, which would
prohibit all LGBT publications from being used in Wikipedia. Would
you propose the same thing about Ebony? Univision? If not, why not?
What is the difference? Even if you subscribed to the ludicrous idea
that all LGBT publications are too "partisan" and thus "unreliable",
the proposed use of the Southern Voice was not to provide facts about
Phillips, but to substantiate the fact that some LGBT organizations
criticized Phillips. We do, of course, want to consider issues of
undue weight and prevent WP articles for being overwhelmed with
criticism, but the things you have proposed would serve to eliminate
legitimate criticism from Wikipedia articles and disqualify many
mainstream, reputable sources from being used in those articles.
As for your LPU, you mention (while taking a moment to attack me) that
you invited "all sorts of people" to participate. You invited 17.
They included the user who wished to scrub all mention of Gannon's
former occupation from WP, who mentions on his user page that he's
from a conservative messageboard and declares his mission here is to
"correct" WP's "liberal bias". Another was an editor who uses
his
user space to denounce about 20 or so editors by name and until fairly
recently had them under a "list of weasels" or somesuch. These were
the people you thought would be good to recruit, and of course they
eagerly signed up. I thought the small number of members and the
relatively high proportion of problem users among them was alarming.
This was the main reason I thought it was imperative to bring your
project to the attention of more users.
Several times in your long message you repeat the acronym soup, to, in
your words "beat this in like a headon commercial." We're not idiots
here, we are aware of these policies. What is needed is a thoughtful
application of these policies, not a simplistic mantra. Chanting BLP!
BLP! BLP! doesn't automatically make you right, or does it mean those
who disagree with you want to stuff WP with libel. (Now with 20
percent more libel!) Mentioning reliably sourced unflattering facts is
not libel. Mentioning criticism of the subject of the article is not
libel. But you've recruited a bunch of POV warriors to go around
stripping WP articles of unflattering things about their fellow
political party members (BLP! BLP! BLP!) with no oversight and no
means to watch the watchmen. This coupled with your wildly
over-expansive interpretation of BLP makes me conclude that you should
not be playing a key role in interpreting the policy or implementing
how it is enforced.